


Pictures in a Shattered Mirror

by TourmalineGreen



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-25 21:04:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 24,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14387091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TourmalineGreen/pseuds/TourmalineGreen
Summary: The (revised!) collection of Tumblr drabbles, prompts, and assorted kinkmeme fills, gathered together for your reading enjoyment.





	1. calligraphy

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: "Ok I'm going to give this a try sorry if it's terrible, but Ben affectionately trying to teach Rey calligraphy because she's a self-taught writer from Jakku, but angst-twist he's in a temporary holding cell after defecting and they don't know if he's going to be exiled or executed or pardoned, so he's just passing this one thing he loves to her just in case"

“…and then let up pressure as you come to the descender, just there.” His voice is low and soft, like his lessons are a secret only for her ears. Rey hesitates, and the brush of her pen slips, smearing her already messy attempt further as a blot of black ink drips onto the paper.

She scowls at it, but there is no answering frustration from him through their bond. “I’m sorry, I’ll try again.”

He doesn’t answer, but she can feel him observing her as she dips her brush, wipes the edges and refines the point like he’s already shown her. Seeing her mess on the page makes Rey feel irrationally angry and wasteful; paper is such a strange thing to use for this, but then again, brushwork like this, calligraphy, as he’d called it, is altogether strange.

She tries again. The letter forms, a bit shakily, under her strokes. Rey chews at her lips slightly as she concentrates; why is it that three smoothly-curved strokes of brush against paper is more difficult than almost any of the lightsaber forms she’s attempted?

“Like that?” Rey looks up at her tutor, and sees the pride mingled with amusement in his gaze. “I know it’s not as good as you, but it’s my best attempt yet. Please tell me we can move onto the next letter.”

He looks at her, a shadow of a smile quirking up at the corner of his mouth, and nods once. “Esk. Like this: Watch.”

Rey watches as he stands up, his rags hanging off of his frame, his body no less beautiful in its movements than it had been the time they’d fought in unison. Now, he raises his arm, taking two fingers of his right hand and dipping them into the mixture of dirt and spittle he’s holding, cupped in his other palm. He draws the letter onto the transparisteel wall, ignoring the cameras monitoring him, ignoring whomever must be watching him, and he draws the letter. Rey feels him move, through the force bond; they’re light years apart, and yet she feels the quiet joy he takes in the movement. It’s not his hand moving, not his fingers; it’s his arm, his whole body, all of him, poured into that character.

He stills, satisfied with his attempt. “Esk. Sound: eh. Diagonal line down, push up, cross, and straight down. Solid lines, no curves or wavering. Can you try it?”

Rey nods, and prepares her pen again.

“On a new piece of paper,” he is quick to remind her. “Take the space you need. Focus on the form first.”

She nods once more, and sets her attempt at the prior letter aside to dry, though the mess is certainly not worthy of display. Rey settles her pen in her hand, takes a breath, and feels the faint prickle of awareness as he shifts over to passively observing her. She draws the letter.

“Esk.” Rey smiles at him. “That’s… that’d be the middle letter of my name, isn’t it?”

“And mine,” he says softly.

Rey looks into his eyes, and the smile falls. “Can you… can you write your name for me, so I can…”

So I can remember, after. She doesn’t need to say it; he can hear it, and he knows, that there is a now between them, and soon, there will be an after. He’s a criminal; the worst of the worst. Facing execution, and he knows it. Although he does not know what form it will take.

After.

Without him, she will truly be alone.

He watches her, and then nods. Following the Esk he’s already written and adding another letter, Nern. Then he comes back to the start, and dips his fingers in again, hesitating. Rey lets out a breath and watches him draw it: Besh.

Ben.

“What will I do without you?” Rey asks, unable to keep the grief from her voice.

Ben smiles back at her, sadly, and uses what’s left of his Force abilities to smear the transparisteel before him to an even brown film of filth.

“After Esk is Forn. It looks like this.”

Ben draws the next letter in the filth, but Rey can hardly see it through her veil of tears.


	2. rescue, return, refuge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sequel to Calligraphy. Three prompts for the price of one!
> 
> "Please think about writing a sequel to your calligraphy fic where Rey (with the help of Rose?) finds out where they're holding Ben and breaks him out of jail before he's executed, the angst is beautiful but I can't live with that ambiguous ending"
> 
> "Prompt- Ben and Rey finally put an end to the longing, pining and mutual want they both have for each other. Soft tender love making??? Idk . Bc your last drabble was masterfully and poignantly written. It destroyed me a little but in a good way. And I just to see our space babies happy and in love."
> 
> "Or if you want something clean... Maybe speculating the shared future between Rey and Ben? What will they be doing a few years post canon ?? New temple? Farming? Politics? Happy future or not I’m curious is you’d imagine it."

“You can’t be here.”

“Are you telling me to go?”

No, that wasn’t what he’d meant at all, but he can’t find the words to say it. Not when she’s here—Rey, she’s  _here,_ not a vision or a dream, but solid and real. She hesitates in the doorway for only a moment, and then heads over to the panel that controls the doors to his cell.

“How… why are you here?”

“We’re getting you out of here.”

We. We? Ben looks over at the other figure in the room, a shorter, dark-haired humanoid female he doesn’t recognize; he guesses... maybe feels through the Force somehow, that she’s from the Otamok system, although he can’t say for sure… but she’s glaring at him like they both know what the First Order did there. So he’s probably correct.

He stands up, feeling a little faint from the quickness of the movement. Across the room, Rey wavers too, and he knows the weakness he feels has rendered his shields virtually nonexistent.

How long has it been since he’s eaten? He doesn’t know. Can’t remember. Maybe the Resistance left him to die down here, waiting and debating about his inevitable execution. Their cruelty was kinder than he’d deserved, when the count of his crimes had been tallied. Maybe this was his execution, but then why would she be here?

“Why are you doing this?”

Rey, focused on slicing into the panel, doesn’t answer. Instead, the other woman steps forward. There’s a tool in her hand, some kind of weapon, perhaps, he can’t tell. It’s pointed at him. And he doesn’t know what it does, but he can see from the look on her face that she has no hesitation about using it.

“I’m here because she’s my friend,” the other woman says. “I hold no love for you, nor for—“

“Rose,” Rey admonishes, still frowning at the panel. She struggles for a second longer with it, before letting out an exasperated noise and reaching for the tools clipped to her waist.

Ben doesn’t say anything. There’s no apology that will suffice, and he knows it. The other woman—Rose—watches him with a coiled sort of appraisal, as if she’s expecting him to attack her through the door.

“This  _kriffing_ piece of…” Rey’s grumbles trail off as the cover on the panel swings open. Rose gives Ben one more warning look before going over to stand beside Rey. She points at a cluster of wires, and says something in an undertone to Rey.

He can’t hear it. Couldn’t hear it even if he were standing right next to them, because his pulse is rushing in his ears, disbelief giving way to a hopefulness that drowns out everything else in the galaxy. The realization has just caught up with him, and it’s like his mind can’t quite process that Rey is here, and she’s breaking him out. His hands hang limply at his sides, and he lifts one slowly, pressing it against the transparisteel. It still bears the dried, faint smears from his last lesson, the sweeping calligraphic marks he’d been trying to teach her.

With a faint pop, and only a little bit of electrical sparking at the control panel, the transparisteel shudders, then slides down into the floor.

Warmer air rushes in, mingling with the cool of his cell, and the first thing he can think is that he wishes he could shower and change clothes, to be clean for her, rather than the bedraggled thing he’s become. It’s an absurd thing to worry about, but there it is. He just wants her to look at him with something other than disgust in her eyes. He wants that, and so many other things he hasn’t allowed himself to want in what feels like forever.

Then she turns, and stares at him like it doesn’t matter. At last, there is nothing between them. The nearness holds them in thrall for just a moment, and somehow they don’t run into each other’s arms, but the feeling is no less profound.

“The ship’s ready,” Rose says. “I’ve got the alarm setup to go, it should draw everyone away from the hangar long enough for you… for you two to escape.”

Rey blinks, and gives her friend a nod. “Thank you.”

Rose smiles, pulling Rey into an embrace. “Go. Be safe.”

Ben seems frozen, rooted to the ground as he watches; freedom doesn’t seem real, not yet. Rose and Rey part, and Rey turns to look at him.

“Come on. We don’t have much time until the next sweep cycle kicks over.”

He nods, but can’t quite move. His vision wavers, and then Rey is beside him, clasping her hand around his.

He’s shaking. Then, he’s moving.

Later, he’ll remember only fragments of their flight.

The ship, some kind of freighter, sleek and curved instead of boxy. The details blur together in his delirium.

The pull as they slip into hyperspace, that familiar tug behind his gut as stars streak by in front of them.

Her gentle touches as she helps him back to what must be the crew quarters, just a narrow bunk that’s not even long enough for him to stretch out, but she’s here, and so it feels like heaven when she helps him down. He wants to stay awake, wants to tell her how much this means to him, what she means to him, but his body won’t stop shaking.

He keeps thinking back, to their last lesson. The curves and lines of the letters swirl in his mind, and he reaches out to trace them in the air, wanting to give her one more lesson, just one more, before she’s taken from him again. She comes to him, holds his hand; he tries to trace that letter there, sure it will make sense if he can just complete it. Sure that she will understand.

And her voice is distant, muted in his ears. But her face is smiling through the worry he sees there, so he knows—he trusts—that everything is going to be alright.

It must be, because if he sleeps now, and never awakens, at least he’ll die with her face in his eyes. That will be more absolution, more mercy than he knows he deserves.

He sleeps.

* * *

He wakes to sunlight, and softness, and the smell of caf.

Slowly, he shifts, stretching, waking. His body knows this isn’t his cell, and it isn’t the bunk on the ship, either. Although the dim, half-remembered memories aren’t much to go by.

Ben opens his eyes, and stares up at the gauzy, embroidered canopy overhead.

Definitely not the ship, then.

He looks around.

The room he sees is… not at all what he expects.

Instead of harsh stone, the walls are plastered and painted in a soft yellow, and the room is filled not with the faint bleak light of a security flare, but with a wash of warmth and the fire of a sunset. It’s almost too beautiful, too perfect… and too bright, Ben thinks, as he turns and squints at the window.

Where is he?

His eyes adjust, and he takes in more details: A table against one tapestry-covered wall, with two plush chairs set beside it; carved wood nightstands, inlaid with shell and gold, on either side of the bed...

He’s in a bed, and it’s massive; there are four carved wooden pillars rising up from each corner, holding the canopy as well as elegant streams of the same sheer fabric which fall down to the floor. He runs a hand across the blankets which cover him, taking in their silken texture, the bunches of embroidered greenery and arabesques, before realizing that he’s  _naked_ beneath them.

The door opens, and Rey comes in.

And the knot of tension in his chest eases, just at the sight of her.

She’s wearing her hair down, he sees, with just two tendrils of it pulled back away from her face. And more than that, she’s dressed entirely differently than he’s ever seen her. It’s a soft blue gown, with a modest, draped neckline, revealing only the hint of her collarbones. The long, bell sleeves are gathered into deep cuffs made from figured velvet, which almost guard her forearms like vambraces. It’s as practical as a borrowed dress can be. More to the point, the gown, and the room, and the bed, and all of it suggests that he’s nowhere near either the Resistance, or the First Order.

He props himself up on his elbows. “Rey… where are we?”

She starts a little, then smiles, relaxing. “You’re awake.”

Laying back down on the bed, he watches her, transfixed, as she approaches. “How long have I been out? What happened?”

His voice is hoarse when he speaks. On beyond the usual depth it reaches when he wakes in the morning. It feels raw.

Rey comes across the room, standing somewhat hesitantly by the side of his bed, and Ben can feel the way her body wants to reach for his. He relaxes, and she smiles faintly, and gives in, pressing her palm to his forehead.

“First question: We’re at an estate, which I was informed belongs to you in a... rather roundabout way, located on Naboo. Vary… vary-something. You’ll forgive me, I’ve been a bit… preoccupied.”

 _With you,_ her thoughts provide. The emotion behind her unspoken words makes every hopeful cell in his body react.

Her hand is cool against his fevered skin. He genuinely cannot tell if it’s the thought of freedom, or the nearness to her when he thought he’d never have either, which is making him feel so flushed and warm.

Or maybe not.

“Second question: You’ve been in and out for a few days now. You have a fever, but last night it broke, and the med droid thinks you’re on the mend.”

“Why did you come for me? Rey… I don’t…”

“The resistance had resolved to execute you, and then it hadn’t, and then it had once more,” Rey says, matter-of-fact despite the roiling emotions he senses coming from her, through their strange bond. “And then they were taking their sweet time deciding precisely how it should be done. And I kept feeling you… through the Force, I mean. You were growing ill. I couldn’t let you die down there.”

He wets his dry lips, and holds her gaze. “Thank you.”

She gives him a soft smile, and pulls her hand away, eyes darting over to the tray that’s been placed on the table. “Are you hungry? The med droid advised you start with bland, nourishing foods, to recover your strength… but there’s caf, I assumed since most people can’t start the day without it, you’d want some.”

He can feel the threads that connect them singing with her nearness, and he relaxes into the bed, into the sensation that wraps around him. Even though she keeps talking, being uncharacteristically chatty and helpful, he doesn’t question it.

Through their bond, he can feel everything he needs to know. Her worry, her concern. Her…

He dares not put a name to it.

Instead, he shifts in the bed, and his thoughts turn to a more practical direction: Was she the one who had undressed him?

Rey stills, and instantly, Ben knows that he hasn’t shielded that thought from her in the slightest. When she turns around, a mug of steaming caf in one hand and a platter of fruit in the other, Ben can easily see the blush that’s growing on her cheeks.

“The med droid assisted,” is her clipped answer. She’s not volunteering anything more than that.

He almost feels like smiling at her amused embarrassment.

But then his face falls.

“Rey… I was awaiting execution. I was prepared to die, for what I had done.”

Her amber eyes lock onto his, holding his gaze. “I know. But I wasn’t.”

“That’s not a thing you get to decide,” he counters. “Rey—”

“They were letting you rot down there,” she says, passion filling her voice. “At first, I told myself, I could just let things take their course. I was reconciled to it; I thought that, perhaps, your mother would…”

Her voice trails off. Between them, a wave of shared sorrow wells up, tinged with deep regret. Their motives, their histories, their experience with the woman had been so different, but in the end, grief was the great equalizer.

“I’m so sorry, Ben.”

“Everyone dies,” is his hollow reply.

Rey blinks at him, and her expression stills. It’s as if she can feel him separating from himself, feel him falling back into the old pattern, the old distance, the coldness, the other name for the other man who lives inside of his skin and sees through his eyes. Then she colors, and steps forward. Sets the mug of caf down on the little bedside table with enough force to slosh a bit of it out onto the table. The plate of fruit goes down beside it, with a clank that makes him flinch.

“Ben,” she says. “Look at me.”

Reluctantly, he looks up.

“You are here, now; do you want to live, or do you want to prove Snoke right?”

He swallows, thickly. “What do you mean?”

Wordlessly, Rey opens the connection between them. He tries to subtly shy away from her, the mental equivalent of a child hiding a forbidden prize beneath his bed, but Rey gently coaxes him out. He’s been bare before her—not in body, but in mind. Although most likely in body as well, but that’s beside the point. She walks inside the echoing chambers of his mind, seeking out the memories, laying them before him, making him acknowledge the truth of them.

Twenty years of torment, and it’s all out there, for her to see. The constant presence in his thoughts, pulling at him with insidious claws. The echoes of a bloodline he hadn’t fully known or understood, until it was far too late.

Destiny. Legacy. Fear and mistrust in the eyes of those who loved him, and a sick sort of hunger in the eyes of the one who would guide him. He’d been a smuggler’s son, a senator’s distraction, a lonely student, a frightened betrayer, a murderer… a killer… a master… a slave. A broken man. The pieces of his own humanity so shattered, so ground down under the boot of one who would remake him, he cannot bring himself back together again, no matter how hard he tries.

Throughout all of this, Rey remains his constant. Beside him, and within him.

“Ben,” she says softly, reaching up to card her fingers through his hair with a gentle, reflexive gesture that makes him shiver. “Who are you?”

“I—” he begins, but the truth is, he doesn’t even know. Perhaps he’s never really known.

She smiles. “You could be anyone... you could be no one, to me.”

His words sound so different when they're rearranged on her lips. And he understands: Once, he had envied her, for the freedom she’d been born into. Not for the hardships, not for the pain and the loss, or the betrayal that she’d kept buried so deep down, even she’d forgotten it. No—for the freedom that came from being a nobody from nowhere. There was no weight upon her shoulders, no legacy to uphold. No last name, no relatives that elicited shocked gasps and whispered rumors. No one had ever searched her face for the latent resemblance of the man who was practically defied. No one had waited for her to snap, or seen her lose control when she’d been trying so hard to keep still.  

And Ben takes in a breath. And then another one. And another—until he feels the bands of tension around his chest loosening. Until the tears begin to fall.

“I’ve done too much, Rey,” he mutters, laying back on the bed, lifting his hands to wipe at his wet eyes. He feels weak, and ashamed, and too bare and loathsome for someone like her to view. “I don’t deserve your pity.”

“When has it ever been about what you deserve?” Rey mutters. Her fingers are still in his hair, stroking him, gentling him. She lets him grieve, then—not only for his mother, but for his father, for his family, for the loss and the pain and the missing decades of his own life. He grieves for all he’s done, all he’s neglected to do. And when he’s done, when the tears and shuddering gasps have subsided, he exhales, like a great weight has been lifted from his chest.

Dimly, he realizes that she’d burned herself on the hot caf, when she’d set it down so roughly.

“You’re hurt…” he says, and draws her hand down from his hair, pressing an instinctive kiss to the red skin there.

She stays with him, her hand in his, until sleep claims him once more. The caf grows cold on the table, forgotten. He sleeps.

* * *

His recovery is slow, and it feels as if he’s waiting for the punishment to come. Because he knows there’s never softness without punishment, somewhere, somehow.

He sleeps in the big bed, and eats, and gains his strength back. He doesn’t read any of the Holonet news, though he’s sure he’d know what he would find there: Reports of his own disappearance, and Rey’s. Fear of turmoil, of destabilizing the fragile peace that the Resistance has managed to win. The scattered fighting, the First Order still holding support in certain systems.

“They won’t come looking,” she tells him one morning, when he’s gotten out of bed and pulled on some loose sleep pants and a tunic, and gone outside to stand on the carved stone balcony in the sunlight.

“How can you be sure?”

Rey smiles out across the water, and he can feel her joy, the appreciation of the lake and the endless green. “I just know.”

He doesn’t question her. If they have to go on the run, then they will. But Ben hopes they can stay here just a little longer… not because of his own pleasure at the estate, but because of hers.

Days pass. The illness finally abates, and he begins to retain his strength once more. First physically—she finds him doing ‘saber drills with a stick he’s found, going over the forms out on the balcony. It amuses him and delights him that through their unshielded bond, he can sense her appreciation of his precision, his strength, and the fact that he’s doing them shirtless.

When Ben catches her staring, she looks away. And he just stretches, and returns to his exercises.

She came to him once, and he thought he’d understood what it was she’d wanted.

The next time—if he’s lucky enough to have a next time—he vows not to make the same mistake.

They train together, and take meals together, and she bids him good night each night and goes to the room beside his and shuts her door, as if shutting a door on what they share has ever been able to sever it completely. It hadn’t done so across all space, and it certainly doesn’t do so with an inch of wood and steel.

He feels her; he doesn’t try to hide it anymore. Naboo is beautiful, with graceful sunsets and gentle storms that roll overhead with lazy rainfall; the distant mountains sometimes shroud themselves in a quiet mist, and none of it, none of it, is as lovely as she is.

“You’re worried that I’ll leave you,” Rey says to him one day when they’re walking by the gardens. It’s almost autumn, and she’s donned a deep russet gown that falls to her knees, worn over slim-cut trousers and embroidered with a pattern that looks like fractal leaves. Around her neck a shawl has been draped, to shield against the wind.

She’s a desert creature; the cold gets to her much more swiftly. Ben walks in a tunic and trousers, and enjoys the bite of wind on his skin almost as much as he enjoys the way her hand is draped across his forearm. He looks out across the lake, and sees the ripples of the wind as they disrupt the surface of the water.

He frowns. “Rey…”

“Because I’m not planning on going anywhere,” she hastily continues. “I just… wanted you to know that. Whatever this is, whatever we have between us… it feels... “

Her voice trails off, and despite the cold, there’s a blush on her cheeks. Ben stops, and turns her gently to face him. With one finger beneath her chin, he tilts her face up, and finally locks eyes with hers.

And he knows exactly what it feels like for her. Their little feedback loop, their ineffable link, thrums into life with the barest brush of his finger across her skin.

_If it’s like this with one touch…_

But no.

“I know what I am, Rey. I’ve stepped so far into the darkness, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to atone for what I’ve done. I’m a murderer. ”

“You’re—”

“I  _am_ ,” he finishes. “There are some things I will never be able to run from.”

He sees tears welling up in her eyes, and can feel her annoyance and frustration, and the deep, deep grief that fills the space between them. She worries that he thinks she’s pathetic, throwing herself at him, abandoning her own friends and allies, turning her back on her training. Thinking she can save him, as if that’s her sole duty in this life. And Rey blinks hastily, and looks down at her shoes, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

“Rey, look at me,” he says. “You are, by far, the strongest being I have ever had the privilege to know. I offered to be your teacher, once, but you’ve taught me more than I ever could’ve dreamed.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Rey says.

“Like what?”

“Like… like this is goodbye.”

Without a second thought, Ben leans down and kisses her.

Rey makes a little squeak of surprise, which swiftly melts away to a faint moan as her body relaxes into his. His hands fall to her waist, and then one arm, encircling her back, lifts her up to to his level. The kiss doesn’t stop; he slants his mouth against hers, tasting her, welcoming her, and Rey gives as good as she gets.

All around them, the Force swirls and pulses, radiant in their union. It seems to sense their inevitability, the coming together no longer denied.

He’s not going to take her out her on the balcony. Much as his body’s baser urges desire, he doesn’t want her back, scraping on the stone, some quick, brutal fuck, some claiming. Instead, his strength renewed and their purpose clear and focused, Ben picks her up, and Rey wraps her legs around his waist. Together, they stumble back inside, into the room.

He sets her down on the bed, and then, parting from her, looks around at the room.

“This is  _your_ room,” he says, somewhat breathlessly. “You mean to tell me, our rooms shared a balcony this whole time—”

“Kiss me again,” Rey says, and she pulls at the scarf which now seems constricting around her throat.

He unwraps her like a gift. Conscious, now, and aware of how much it would bother her to rip her dress, he works at the tiny buttons at the neckline with trembling hands, and she gathers it up and shimmies out of it, her back still on the bed. It’s an artless seduction, practical like the stripping of a wire; Ben’s heart turns over at the sight of her bare breasts. Her skin, smooth like cream and bared to him, nipples tight coral buds on her little breasts. She groans as his hands close over them, before he’s even aware that he’s moved, and he feels a surge of pure masculine pride in the way his hands engulf her body so wholly, so completely. He wants to cover her and take her inside of himself, the way he can feel she wants the same. The idea, of not just penetrating her, but being entered, body and soul, thrills him, and fills him with a pulse of desire.

Without a second thought he lowers his mouth to them, thumbing and rolling one nipple in his broad hand, tasting and teasing the other with his teeth. Rey squirms and bucks and writhes beneath him, little gasps fueling his fire. Urging him on. She threads her hands through his hair and tugs, guiding him, directing him, and he’s never been harder in his entire life than he is in this moment. He ruts against the bed, grinding his confined cock into a softness which isn’t her body. His tongue swipes across her nipple, and he feels her hips buck up into him, chasing sensation. Needing more.

“Too many clothes,” Rey whimpers. He draws back from her, aching at the loss of contact, but eager to oblige him.

She watches as he pulls off his shirt, and casts it aside. There’s a slight negotiation with his oversensitive, straining cock, and then the tie at the waist of his trousers is next; they slide down, along with his underclothes, for him to step out of and kick under the bed.

And the hunger in her eyes… Ben’s never been a vain man; he’s seen the refinement of his body as a necessary process, a honing of a weapon of war. He’s never thought of himself as beautiful, but that’s clearly what she sees, and it’s enough to make him blush under the love he sees in her eyes.

Love… he’s named it, now; there’s no returning from this moment.

 _Of course I love you, you idiot,_ Rey thinks back at him, more exasperated than truly angry.

Ben grins wildly, and reaches for her hips. In all of the heady glow of the moment, she’s forgotten that she, too, is wearing too many clothes. His hands encompass the breadth of her hips, and he briefly dips his thumbs into the little inward curve of her navel before pulling at the laces, sliding the russet-brown trousers down her slim legs.

There. All of her, in her glory. The dark vee at the juncture of her thighs. Ben reaches out to pet her there, feeling his cock throb at the way her crisp curls give way to softness, utter softness, of the skin between her legs. Unashamed, Rey parts her legs and lets him see. Unspoken between them is the fact that this is a first for both—seeing, and being seen. Being with another in this intimate way.

Ben’s pupils are blown wide, his eyes darkened and his mouth softly open as he uses his thumbs to part her folds. She’s glistening-wet for him, pink and tender and almost shy, the way she’s so tucked away and hidden. So unlike his own body. Through their bond, which only seems to be growing by the minute the longer they are skin-to-skin, he can sense her own fascination with his exposed cock, too. She’d seen plenty of partially-clothed beings of many different species, back in the dusty town of her former life; truth be told, he’s a little amused and distracted at how curious she is about his cock. Had she never seen a human male before?

“I’m just relieved it doesn’t have pincers,” Rey pants, as his fingers caress the tender skin, smearing her moisture around. “Or spores.”

At this, Ben snorts in amusement.

“No spores,” comes his gruff response. He crawls up on the bed, sitting between her parted legs, and moves his fist over his cock slowly, letting her feel the way it feels for him.

Her mouth opens is a softly-parted  _oh_. Watching as the skin slides over the ruddy, glistening head of him, back and forth, back and forth, the pressure building… feeling the tight way he holds himself, the way he holds pleasure at bay, waiting for her. There’s a thousand things he wants to do to her, a thousand filthy things he’s seen in holos or out in the daylight of the slums and back-alley places he’s visited. He wants to put his mouth on her sex, to part her with his tongue and taste her; he can feel the way she wants to do the same for him, and the mental image of that—Rey, on her knees before him, dark eyes watching him as her cheeks hollow out around his cock—makes him groan.

Makes them both groan.

“I can’t…” he pants. “I don’t think I can last very long, once…”

“Please, Ben…  _please_ ,” Rey uses the Force to draw him close, a clumsy, desperate push at his back that makes him put a hand out on the bed to stop himself from collapsing atop her. His palm is flat against the bedspread, and down below, his other hand holds his cock at the base, prodding against her.

“Take me inside,” he says, a prayer, mindless words in worship of her sweetness. “Rey, let me in…”

“Yes, yes, yes—” Rey plants her feet on the bed, and splays her knees wide. With a guiding hand, she opens herself for him, and feels the blunt pressure when it finally connects with her entrance.

It seems impossible; the pressure of him, the slow intrusion, the steady stretch… in and in and in… Ben is big all over, utterly proportional, and Rey cannot believe that it will fit. It seems impossible, until suddenly, he’s there. Fully sheathed within her, the base of his crisp curls against her own.

They open their eyes, unable, in that moment, to tell the  _he_ from the  _she_. Because he can feel himself stretching to welcome the slow intrusion, feel his body taking, accepting, welcoming. And Rey can feel herself enveloped in the sweet, tight warmth. All is united. They are one being.

This isn’t going to last long at all.

But Rey smiles up at him, tilting her hips, pressing a heel against his back.

He moves.

Slowly at first, and then gaining rhythm. It’s beautifully awkward, the pair of them perched on the end of the bed, fucking slightly sideways on top of an embroidered bedspread. Rey reaches out with the Force and braces herself, hips rising to meet his tentatively at first, and then gaining momentum. Gaining rhythm. There’s something lovely in the way his cheeks color with exertion, the way sweat beads on his brow, black hair grown overlong and sticking to it. Sound returns to her ears, and she can hear the steady wet rhythm of their bodies. Smell the heady scent of their sex.

It’s all too much; it’s not enough.

She feeds it all back into him, holding him, hands around his taut arms, caressing his shoulders, mindless words tumbling from their lips, flowing between them across their bond. Being with him is more exhilarating than the first dip and swoop of flight; his soft noises, groans, exhalations, pull her in like gravity. It is impossible to deny him, deny herself.

Everything blurs after that—hands and skin and mouth. The way he rises up above her, hands beneath her hips, moving her onto his cock. Instinct takes over where enthusiasm meets inexperience. He won’t last long, but he’s determined to bring her there with him.

Let this be the first of a new era, a place where they do all things as one, together.

Too far gone to speak, Ben thrusts against her, again and again, feeling how she likes it when he grinds down a bit on each stroke. She’s beautiful like this, he thinks: Sweaty and flushed and wild, her eyes closed and her mouth open as she cries out again and again. She’s close; he’s closer. But it takes nothing at all for him to shift slightly, propping himself up on one arm as he pushes the other between where their bodies are joined. Rubbing more steadily at the place above her entrance.

And like that, her climax washes over her, sharp and wild, like a tidal wave, like a fierce desert wind. Her body clenches down around his cock and he’s gone, shouting and giving himself over to the wildness of it all, driving deep as he feels himself filling her.

* * *

Night falls around them.

He rises, at some point, and walks on unsteady legs over to find a towel and wet it. Rey drowses, a smile on her face, as he cleans her. He’s gentle, so gentle, with every tender part of her. Then he lifts her and tucks her beneath the covers of her own bed.

There’s only a moment’s hesitation, a brief twinge of guilt and worry, before her answering wave of comfort and yearning beckons him to slide in between the sheets, and hold her close in the darkness.

They sleep.

* * *

He’s curling and uncurling a strand of her hair around his forefinger, their bodies pressed close together, sated from another round of lovemaking, where they’d finally been able to do at least some of the other things they’d both been wanting to try.

There’s so much more time, now, to try it all. And he wants it all. All of her, every taste, every touch, every word. He never wants to leave this bed, leave her side; love and sex have gone to his head more potent than any drink, and for a man long-denied, her body is sweet as fresh spring water when she pours herself out atop him.

The bond is quiet and content between them as she sleeps. He can sense the edges of her dreams, just there for him to reach into, but he remains fully present, watching her.

Now that he can watch her, like this; he may never want to watch anything else again.

But, ah, that’s the problem, isn’t it?

Eventually, they’ll have to rise from their bed and face the rest of the day. Not to mention the galaxy that will come knocking at their door. Despite her confidence, Ben knows that it’s inevitable.

In his arms, Rey stirs faintly. Her head is pillowed on his arm, mouth faintly slack and body curled into a tight little ball. He wants to see her loose-limbed and sated again. To feel her relax against him, to unlearn the protective pose that she’s adopted even in her sleep, from those cold nights in her wretched little desert shell. He wants every night to be warm and soft.

He wants to find her family, reassemble them, and lightsaber them in the face, too.

But: Priorities.

She stirs again, and Ben belatedly realizes that he’s been projecting his emotions into her sleep. They spill over into her like ink being drawn up onto wet paper. He pulls them back, bathing her in love as she wakes, watching contentedly as her frown relaxes.

Rey turns, and looks up into his eyes.

“Hello.”

“Hello.” Ben smiles.

Rey yawns like a cat, all cute and sweet, and ending in a shrug with teeth, before grinding back against him shamelessly. He groans, and feels himself respond to her. The rest of his body is faintly sore from all of their exertions… or perhaps he’s feeling what she feels, the line is more than a little blurry between them at this point. There’s a natural spring, though, that’s been carved out of the rocks and into a little pool; Rey’s seen it, and so he’s seen it, and the idea of spending the morning there, with her, gives his cock additional encouragement.

And yet the feeling, that unsettled feeling, lingers within him.

Rey rolls onto her back, still encircled in his arms. “What is it?”

Ben sighs. He seeks out the words, and Rey, sensing his turmoil, doesn’t push.

“I… I know you don’t want to hear this, but I need you to listen.”

Rey stills, watchful, alert. He can feel the brush of her mind against his, reassuring as much as it is probing him for answers. The last thing she wants, he knows, is for him to pick up the thread of conversation that had led them into bed in the first place.

But it’s what he must do.

“Sooner or later... “

“Ben—”

“I can’t just sit by, and do nothing,”he says. “Choosing not to decide, choosing to hide away like this—Force, you know my mind, now. You know that I want nothing more than to have this, just this, forever. But I can’t do that. If I have the ability to act, and I do nothing, then I’ve damned myself a second time.”

Rey presses her lips together. He knows how it must seem to her: His mind, a turmoil so carefully shrouded from her, drawn back into his own contemplations.

He thinks of his father’s face, before he’d fallen. He hears Rey’s scream, the cry of anguish a contrast to his father’s startled surprise. It is a memory which will always be with him. And then he’d looked up, and seen Rey standing there, with the traitor beside her—

No, he had a name now.

And then, like the sudden jump to hyperspace, Ben’s mind surges forward. He blinks, and looks down at Rey, a calm purpose spreading across their shared bond.

“I know what I have to do.”

* * *

 When the news gets out, nearly the whole galaxy is in shock of the implications of the leak. Someone—reports are mixed, it seems, on where the signal itself had been traced to—has managed to slice into the First Order’s systems and make public all of their recruitment records for the past twenty years.

Every star system, every planet, every little moon where they’d done their ‘recruiting,’ and it’s all out there on display. Which means that every stormtrooper, every officer, every sanitation worker and mechanic and technician still remaining with their fleet now knows the truth of their own origins.

Sure, it’s going to take weeks, maybe even months to comb through and decrypt properly, but the idea of it is like a spark on dry tinder. Even the ones who haven’t heard of FN-2187’s defection look at the holonet news with wonder and curiosity. Even the ones who believed so strongly that their were allied with the proper side, the side of justice and structure and order, even they cannot deny that the truth of their origins is tantalizing.

And some start defecting.

Just a few, at first--then more, then shiploads, by the dozens, casting off their armor and their numerical designations, returning planetside, to jungles or tropical worlds or wide, sweeping plains. They return, searching for familiar faces. They return, searching for their homes.

For families.

It’s the least that Ben can do. But it’s more than enough for those who find what they seek. Some return to open arms, and some, to quiet gravesites. But it’s the promise of it, of connection, individuation, independence, which drives them onward.

In just a few short months, the First Order is utterly out of order. There are no troops who wish to lay down their lives in service to those who’ve stolen them. Only the fervent fanatics, who sought to build a new Empire out of their ideology, remain.

And honestly, they’re not much use in a fight. Softened, as they are, from being on the bridges of the ships, and not in the thick of it.

The galaxy may never fall to a unified peace under one fist. Maybe none of them ever had the right to wish that it would be so. For Ben’s part, he finds that there is no name that suits him any longer. Not Solo, not Organa, and definitely not Skywalker. His near-mythic identity fades away, and the distraction of the First Order’s fall is more than enough to make those who might still seek him stop looking. Whether or not they suspect that he was the one behind the leak doesn’t matter.

Once, he sought to give Rey everything: The galaxy, a throne at his side, his very name. Now, she gifts him the freedom to be a nobody. Just a pair of travelers, out to explore the galaxy. He’s just Ben, and she is just Rey, and that’s enough.

It’s enough. 


	3. jealousy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Redeemed Ben solo avoiding Rey and pining because he mistakenly thinks she’s dating Poe"

Ben sees it in the way she smiles at the pilot, when they work together on a ship, elbows-deep in grease and gears. He sees it in the way she laughs at his jokes, at the way he presses close to her when—strictly speaking—he doesn’t need to. He sees it in the easy familiarity the pilot has with her, and it eats at him, feeds that beast called jealousy which lies coiled within his belly.

It doesn’t matter.

It shouldn’t matter—because she isn’t for him.

Ben forces himself, every time, to look away from Rey. He forces himself to focus on his work, and tries not to pay attention to the itch of the missing Force as it doesn’t flow through his veins. It’s a condition of his… rehabilitation, as they termed it. Even neutered as he is, he knows full well that everyone keeps an eye on him as he moves about his daily work. Like they’re waiting for him to turn. Just like before, when the legacy of his bloodline had spilled out upon his world, veiling it in red.

Ben rises early, and works his hands raw, and sleeps only when exhaustion claims him; in the night, when he closes his eyes, he sees her face, and it torments him more than physical pain could ever do. The rage in her eyes, when they’d fought in the snow; the trust in her bond, before they’d fought as one. He isn’t allowed a saber now, of course, but he’s seen her with her own rebuilt one, clipped to her belt.

He’s seen him, that… pilot… the dark-haired one, who makes two-thirds of the base swoon on an off day, he’s seen Poe tease her about her saber. When he closes his eyes he still sees it: the two of them, sitting together at the commissary table.  

Maybe he just wants her because he wants what they shared. The power of the bond, the pure flow of the Force between them, within them; maybe every whispered rumor about him is true, and he’s a creature too far gone to be welcomed back to the fold. Maybe he wants her only to sink his claws and teeth into her, to drain away every last bit of light.

Maybe all of that is true.

Maybe none of it.

He doesn’t know. What he does know is, like an injury he can’t stop prodding, the pain of watching her be courted by another man is more fierce and all-encompassing than any other pain. More than the electricity that used to course through his skin when he displeased his master. More than the grief and anguish of his own sins. If he cannot have her, then let them be parted.

But do not make him watch her with another.

She finds him one day, crouched beneath a speeder, his too-long hair hanging in his face as he works. He can feel her presence, her nearness, even without the Force to guide him; yet another reason why being near her, and being parted, are equally as wretched.

“Ben…?”

He stills his hands, but doesn’t look up. “Am I needed elsewhere?”

She doesn’t answer. When he chances a look at her, she’s giving him a sad half-smile. “Yes. Of course you are.”

He sighs. Reaches for the rag and wipes his hands clean, or rather, just smears the grease around on his calloused palms. He stands up slowly, head still bowed. It hurts to look at her, to be in her presence. She is radiant, like light, like air, like water; she is purer than he will ever be, and no matter how clean his hands, he will always sully her.

“Wh—” he starts to speak, but his words are silenced as she rises up on her toes and presses her mouth to his. It’s sloppy, and startling in its simplicity, and he is struck completely still, as if her touch has just frozen him in carbonite.

When she breaks away, he looks down at her; her eyes are shining wet, and she reaches up, and brushes the hair away from his face. “You  _are_ needed elsewhere.  _I_ need you.”

He gapes at her, not understanding. And then the enchantment breaks, and he understands, reading it all in her eyes. He steps closer to her, wrapping one arm behind her and lifting her up to kiss him once more.

Everything else can wait. For there is nothing more important than this… the sweetness of her mouth, the taste of her, the pure, perfect rightness of this moment. 

She is his. And he is never letting go of her again. 


	4. childish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Okay, I couldn’t think of a smutty Reylo prompt, so here’s a fluffy one: The Force bond opens for Kylo to find Rey quietly playing with a new Captain Raeh doll in the middle of the night because she can’t sleep - and Captain Raeh’s current mission is to find and rescue Ben Solo."

Rey knows that it’s all a bit childish—playing with dolls, having imaginary adventures, talking to herself—but it’s late, and once again, sleep is elusive. So she falls back on something that’s familiar and comforting.

“Captain Ræh, your mission is of the utmost importance,” Rey says the words in what’s almost a whisper, holding the orange- and white-wrapped doll in her hands. “The senator’s son has been out of contact for twenty-two hours how, and time is of the essence.”

“Acknowledged,” Rey responds, her voice pitched just a little differently, a little firmer, a little more determined. “I won’t fail you. I’ll bring him back, I swear it.”

In her mind’s eye, the doll is not a doll; in the tapestry of her mind, the threads weave together, as vivid as childhood: She’s pulling down the helmet over her head, adjusting the visor, flipping the switches of the X-wing as it prepares to jump to lightspeed. The senator’s son: Ben Solo, has been taken hostage by forces hostile to the newly-established Republic. They’d thought he’d be safe, training with Master Luke, but then both of their signals had gone dark. Rey imagines Luke returning, his face full of grief and worry.

They’ve taken him, Leia—

I’ll put my best pilot on it, Leia would respond, her face resolute, her dark eyes trained on Captain Ræh’s. Bring my son back home. Please.

“I will, General,” Rey whispered softly to the darkness. Forgetting, just for a moment, the jumbled mess of her story. “If I can… I will…”

Rey shivered. Slowly, she set the doll down, and looked up at the stars. This used to be calming. A lifetime ago, when the heat of the desert would dip down, she would give herself comfort with the stories she’d tell in the darkness. Now, they only made her sad. Because she knew, now, that the General’s dark eyes were so like her son’s. She knew that it had not been kidnappers which had taken him away. Something darker, far more sinister, had stolen her son.

No, she amended hastily. He made a choice. We all make choices.

Do we? Truly?

She takes a breath just as the familiar sense washes over her. The bond, opening between her and—

Rey does not know anymore which name to call him. He isn’t the Ben Solo of her nighttime illusions; and she certainly cannot call him Kylo Ren, either. In her mind, he exists between those two spaces, between those two identities.

“It’s night, where you are?” comes his dark-honey voice in her thoughts.

Rey turns, and looks over at him. He’s sitting on the end of her bed—or rather, she’s likely sitting on the end of his, depending on the point of view. He’s wearing sleeping clothes, by the look of it: Dark, loose trousers; a tunic. His hair is wet at the ends, faintly curling. He looks tired, weary. She feels a rush of annoyance at this continued intrusion, but then it deflates. He has just as much control over the timing of this bond as she does.

“Yes,” Rey says. It’s no great intelligence breach to admit that.

He nods once. “Me too.”

And then his head cocks to the side, as if noticing what’s in her hands for the first time. “Is that… are you playing with dolls?”

“Switch off,” Rey scowls back at him, and sets it down. “What do you want tonight? I’m tired.”

But it’s impossible to conceal her thoughts from him—or the story, which had seemed so comforting, so engrossing, only moments ago. He reaches in and Rey doesn’t resist, lets him pluck the tale from her thoughts with all the unconcerned air as a man choosing fruit from a bowl.

“A rescue mission, hmm?” he says—and then the amusement fades from his face as his eyes lock with hers. “There is no Ben Solo to rescue. Not any longer.”

Rey sighs, but does not look away from his heated gaze. “We all tell ourselves stories, I suppose. Some more childish than others.”


	5. trespasser

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Here’s a smutty prompt: Dark fae lord Kylo

It was not the glint of gold, nor the temptation of rubies, nor the dancing of the fae-lights which called her into the forest. It had been nothing more than a simple, lowly plant—an herb, red-tinged, heart-shaped leaves, bitter to chew but excellent to stop the tide of hemorrhage in a woman’s flow—that made her step off the path. And the moment she had done so, she had felt, keenly, her mistake.

The pathway was gone.

Her foot had been on cobblestone moments before; now, all was dirt and loam. A blanket of pine needles and low-lying shrubs, including the one she’d gone in to find.

Now, it was of secondary importance.

I have to find the path, Rey thought, swallowing down her panic. I have to leave the forest.

Silver knife in hand, basket hanging off of one arm, Rey stilled, and scanned around herself in a slow circle. She did not move, did not take another step.

She was a fool.

Every child knew of the bargain that had been struck with the people of the forest: The pathway granted safe travel, but the woods themselves were to be left untouched. But the plant had been so close, just barely out of reach; Rey thought of the woman back in Maz’s cottage, who labored in pain and agony, a mother of four already whose living children needed her to survive. Rey had been sent for the necessary herbs; they were counting on her, and now she had—

What was that?

She was not alone in this place.

Slowly, Rey clutched her silver knife, body reacting to the fear of an unseen predator. A wolf, or a bear, or some other creature. No.

A gory death would be easier, kinder, more merciful than being caught by one of the keepers of the forest; Rey had heard the tales, and she knew full well that those who were foolish enough to invade the sacred forest very rarely returned whole, if they returned at all. Their minds were addled, when they stepped out of the shadow of the boughs. Their lips tumbled with unintelligible sounds, all rational speech forgotten. They traced symbols in the air, cried or screamed or waked under the full moon, wandering to the edge of the treeline before falling to their knees, helpless with terror.

The path! Rey looked to her left and right, hoping for a sight of comforting stone, and finding nothing but green and brown. Please, holy mother, please! Don’t let them—

A lone figure stepped before her sight. He had moved without sound, moved so swiftly before her that Rey could not even manage a scream.

Sunlight dappled his skin, and he wore the shape of a man, but Rey knew that he was not like her.

In the fullness of his otherworldly presence, Rey was struck motionless. He towered above her, pale and bare-chested, his long black hair crowned with a wild wreath of ivy and holly; antlers rose from the crown, although whether they were growing from his head or merely adorning it Rey could not tell. She had seen men working in the fields, their shirts off, but the sight of his body made her feel entirely differently, as if she were a sword, red-hot, plunged into the cooling waters. As if something within her had changed in a fundamental, alchemical way. Her eyes trailed down, down to the waistband of his black leather trousers, before tearing them away in fear. A shudder went through her—the natural instinctive fear that prey has of predator—and, almost unaware of herself, she moved to take a step backwards.

Only to catch her foot on a root, and fall, sprawling, to the forest floor.

“Little human,” came the man’s resonant voice. “Why are you in my woods?”

She had not seen him move his mouth to speak; she had only heard him, in her thoughts, as if his dark stare had penetrated straight through to her mind, and taken up residence there. Rey could not look away.

After only a moment’s hesitation, her senses seemed to return to her body, and she crawled backwards, inelegantly, stepping on her skirt and abandoning her basket and blade as she tried to retreat. The figure before her did not pursue her, but Rey already knew that she was trapped. No matter how far she ran, or crawled, he would find her. He was seared upon her, like a brand.

“I think I should not mind it if all trespassers were as lovely as you,” the creature spoke once more upon her thoughts, and the feeling of him made a dark shiver course through her body. 

Rey winced. “Please, let me go.”

The creature tilted his head, considering her with something akin to amusement on his features. Rey had always been told that the keepers of the forest were unfathomably beautiful, far beyond what normal humans could perceive; she had imagined something blurred-out, indistinctly ethereal, and yet to her eye, he had an angular asymmetry of features, with dark-golden eyes under a stern brow, a full, smirking mouth, and an almost hawkish nose.

There was no denying it however; he was not human.

And he was… smirking at her. As if he found her fear amusing. Like she was a cornered animal, something to be played with and taunted before it was consumed.

Rey rallied her courage. “Take it, then… what you want. Leave me witless and blind. Or kill me, if that’s your pleasure.”

He straightened up at this, and such a human-like expression of startled amusement crossed his features. Rey frowned.

“What is it, then, that was so tempting about my forest, scavenger?” Again his woodsmoke voice filled her thoughts; again his mouth was motionless. “Tales of riches, perhaps? A hidden cache of gold, which you humans so richly prize?”

“Bitter Heart’s-mantle,” Rey said. “It’s a small plant, an herb… worthless to you, but to a mother, suffering the pains of birth—”

“You’re telling the truth.” The words sounded almost surprised as they echoed in her mind. The tone was no longer mocking.

“Of course I’m—” Rey flinched, words dying in her throat as she felt him pull and prod at the tangle of her fearful thoughts. The image of the plant in question floated to the top of her thoughts, and she watched, both enthralled and horrified at the sensation. “Stop that!”

Abruptly, the intrusion withdrew. And yet the creature still watched her.

“A midwife’s apprentice,” he continued in her mind: “and yet you are untouched?”

Rey flushed. “How can you know that?”

She regretted the question the moment it passed her lips. Rey had the sense that there were other things, things beyond the image of the herb, the feel of the knife in her hand, the confusion and fear and awe she felt as she stared up at him… he had looked in on her, seen through her, down to her very marrow. She shifted on the ground, aware of how her skirt had ridden up, revealing the long line of her legs, clad in practical woolen stockings, but so much more exposed than she had been to any man. Human or… otherwise.

Discretely, she flicked the hem of her skirt back down as best she could. His eyes followed the motion, and then came back up to meet and hold her gaze.

“I know everything that passes through the borders of my realm, scavenger. Every leaf that trembles before it falls from the tree. Every flower, as it strains, waiting, to come into bloom. Every dark thing, deep in the soil. There is nothing that escapes my gaze.” He took a step closer, moving soundlessly, like light upon water as he moved; still the voice resonated in her mind. “Are you not aware of what I am, girl?”

“I know what you are,” Rey whispered, admitting it to herself even as she spoke the words aloud: “You are the Lord of the Forest.”

He nodded.

At this, it was as if a veil had been lifted from her eyes. She beheld him in all of his beauty, and gasped at the image before her. This had been the sight which had driven others mad. His had been the voice which had made them claw at her ears. Rey felt heat lick at her veins, a terrible sort of hunger, a yearning, a thirst, which not even the purest spring could quench in her. Her body had come alive with want.

And yet, she resisted it.

Get out of my head, she thought, as strongly as possible. Imagining that she was yelling it. She smiled, only a little, at the faint wince that appeared on his face.

And then the smile fell, when a darkness once again formed his features into that of an amused predator.

“You… you are something different, scavenger. I have decided… I will give you a gift.”

Her heart thudded in her chest; the ground was damp and cool beneath her palms, and yet that heat, oh, that yearning, only intensified. “Why—”

“I give all wayward travelers a gift when they enter my realm. A gift when you enter, and one when you return.”

“S-so you’ll let me go?” Rey asked, while thinking, as privately as she could, though it hardly mattered now: I’ll never come back here. If he lets me go, I’ll never step off the path again, I swear it!

He exhaled slowly, and took a step closer. Rey had to crane her neck upwards to meet his dark gaze. “I will let you go, scavenger. I will give you what you came here to find.”

Somehow, Rey knew that he was not speaking of the Bitter Heart’s-mantle at all. The air around her was cool, and yet her body was on fire. Much as she wanted to blame it on some dark spell, some ancient magic, she knew that this was nothing more than her own yearning, guiding her past the boundaries of decency. There was no judgement, here in the forest. No need to be afraid. She swallowed thickly, and reached down, drawing up the hem of her skirt.


	6. oceanic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The obligatory Reylo Little Mermaid AU ficlet.

Were all two-leggers fashioned like this one?

Rey stared down into the human’s face, feeling the sand on her belly, and the waves lapping at her tail. She shouldn’t have pulled herself so far out of the safety of the water, shouldn’t be here at all, revealing and potentially endangering herself—another human could come by at any moment, come collect the one she now lay beside—but she had always been reckless. Besides, she wanted to make sure that this one was safe.

Absurd fondness. A weakness, and she knew it. But Rey could not deny it.

She’d caught him as his ship had gone down, found him unconscious and tasted the bloom of his red blood in the water, and she’d known that she could not let him drown. He was tall and broad, and she’d had to pull off his heavy leather boots and thick wool outer garment in order to bring his head above the waves, but now he lay here, warm in the sand, a pale stillness to his cheeks that worried her.

Her folk, the people of the sea, could breathe, for a time, in the air, but the water was much sweeter. Rey felt her throat begin to dry out as she watched him, distracted by his long dark hair, the angular beauty of his face. She had a few more minutes above the water. And only handful longer than that before someone would come looking for her.

And then—oh, the trouble she’d be in, if she was caught! Unkar had sent her to scavenge the wreck, not to waste time saving a human. Humans were decidedly not salvage. Their flesh was not sweet, and their tools rusted, and their cloth coverings had no real purpose beneath the waves. Rey had watched many drown, feeling sad for them, but unable to change their fates; the ocean would claim its bounty, and it was taboo to go against Her hunger. And yet… something had drawn her to him. Something strange, a deep mystery that resonated in her bones.

This human… this one did not belong to the ocean. This human was hers .

The human stirred.

Rey startled, watching his lips part, seeing a trickle of water run from his mouth. He turned his head to the side and coughed more of it up, and then, seeming to notice that he was not alone, looked back up at her.

His eyes were dark, dark like black pearls. He blinked, then squinted at her, and Rey smiled.

“Who—?”

He only managed a weak noise before coughing claimed him again. Rey was dislodged, shifted on the sand as he rolled onto his side, spitting up more water yet. Stars! His chest was so broadly formed, perhaps he had attempted to swallow the entire ocean. It certainly seemed so. Rey watched, helpless, as he shuddered and heaved. She reached out and parted the curtain of his hair, the black strands hanging limply to a pale, angular face. He stilled under her touch, breathing deep and even, collecting his wits once more.

A thrill of something like recognition passed through her—but that was impossible; she had never seen this human before today. And yet it was like calling to like. Like hearing a song on the current, and being drawn into its thrall.

Her eyes skimmed down his body, taking in the tattered black garment he wore across his broad chest, the way his lower garment clung to shapely, eternally fascinating legs. Shamelessly, she patted him at the waist, feeling the play of muscle and sinew beneath cloth, wishing she could find a way to remove the offending garments and see him bare and revealed. It was no different from her own bare form; her long gold-and-silver tail was not hindered by any bindings or garments. Instead, she had stretched it out to flick her fins in the surf, occasionally scattering water on her rapidly-drying body.

A little longer… let me look on him a moment more…

Rey tore her eyes away from his lower frame and looked up into his face; he was watching her. Sand had caught on his wet hair, and a pallor clung to his cheeks, but oh, he was the most lovely thing she had ever seen. His eyes, brown ringed with amber and flecked with gold, framed by dark lashes… his mouth, plush and sweet, softly parted as he stared up at her, stunned.

“You…” his voice was hoarse and raw, but its darkness thrummed through her.

And then, like the breaking of a spell, a distant call made both of them startle.

“Hullo! Hullo!”

Humans! Rey jumped, and dove into the waves, fear coursing through her every nerve. They’d come to search for him, to take him—

—back to his people. Back where he belongs.

In the shallows, under the shelter of an outcropping of stones, Rey watched as a group of men came down the beach, helping him up, taking him away. She watched as he turned, casting one more glance back into the water, confusion evident on his face. Frightened, Rey pressed herself further down into the waves, feeling her heart breaking, not understanding why. A red-haired man propped him up under one arm, and a tall, strikingly blond woman helped him on the other side. With each step he took away from the water, Rey felt the strange connection between them grow tighter, her throat constricting with emotion.

He was leaving her.

She would never see him again.

Beneath the waves, she flicked her powerful tail back and forth, hands clinging to the rock as she watched them retreat, until finally, they turned, and he was out of her sight.

Rey allowed herself one sob, and then dove back beneath the waves, her body yearning to taste the sea once more. She would find a way to see him once more, she vowed that she would—but how?


	7. decay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "prompt: rey visits the site of the burned Jedi temple (on a resistance mission of some sort?) and when she's in ben solo's destroyed hut, the force bond kicks in"

It isn’t as if she hasn’t crawled through ruins before, although none of them have been like this.

Rey’s used to metal and wires, narrow, crumpled conduits and shattered transparisteel, junction boxes and circuits and every surface hot from the merciless sun. This little, broken hut is hardly worth noticing; it’s overgrown with vines and plants, and it has a musty, earthy smell to it. It’s cool and almost sweet, the scent of rot; a novelty if nothing else. Things do rot in a desert, but they don’t smell like this. Rey hasn’t yet seen enough of the galaxy to grow tired of new things, nor travelled far enough away from Jakku to not at least try and search through what’s left of a thing that’s been abandoned.

It’s against her very nature to leave a broken thing cast aside. Against her instincts to not at least try to repair it, to salvage it, to find something of value.

But there’s something here… something beyond the rot and the grit, something that makes her hesitate. Rey holds herself at the threshold of the hut, and circles round it once, senses alert. It looks as if the whole roof has caved in, but the walls in the back are mostly intact. There are no traps, but… There’s memory in this place, underneath it all. Dark, shadowy; something lurking in the corners of her mind like grime settling into the grooves of her scars and fingerprints.

Rey returns to the doorway, and lifts up the beam which blocks her path. She uses the Force to let it fall to the side. She methodically clears the roof tiles away, bit by bit, the ones that haven’t shattered or been ground down to dust. It’s hard work, and the reward underneath it all is the remains of a desk and bed, some cloth that’s rotted away, a little wooden chest in the corner.

She bends down, and picks up the first object which catches her eye. It appears to be some kind of shallow metal bowl, as small as the cupped palm of her hand; it’s coated inside with some kind of dark, ashy residue. Rey gingerly touches her fingertip to the substance, drawing it across and examining her skin when it comes away stained. It tastes bitter on the tip of her tongue, and she can’t identify it. She places the little bowl in her canvas sack, and continues on.

A little box, small, with holes in the arched top and sides is next. Rey wonders why someone would’ve drilled holes into a perfectly useful box, then considers that perhaps some creature native to this planet attempted to burrow through the wood. She turns it over in her hands, half expecting some little, burrowing thing to fall out, but instead, there’s nothing. Nothing inside, but a little stand… Rey takes the small metal bowl back out of the bag, and settles it, perfectly resting on the stand.

Well, then. That must go together, even if she doesn’t know what it—

She feels his presence before she sees him, the pressure surrounding her, the air cooling and clearing to match the processed, filtered smell of what can only be identified as a starship.

Rey doesn’t turn. She feels his gaze on her back, and instinctively her hand flexes towards the blaster at her side. Her muscles tighten in anticipation.

“What do you want?” His name is on her lips, his true name, but she doesn’t say it. “I have nothing to say to you.”

“You just did,” comes his reply.

Cold sarcasm is still his default state, apparently.

And yet… His voice sounds hollow, and it’s not merely because of the connection. Rey frowns.

“Why did you go?” he asks. “I offered you the galaxy, a place at my side, and you left—”

“I’m sorry, I had—my friends were in danger, your mother was in danger, and you—”

“—what I was offering you, Rey!”

Despite her better intentions, Rey whirls around to face him. He’s standing too close, right there in the ruined doorway, and she can feel herself flushing out of anger and embarrassment and—

“Ben, what did you think would happen, after?”

His mouth works, full lips moving. “What do you mean?”

She looks him up and down, taking in the view of his tailored black garments, the sublime fit of them across his broad shoulders and muscular body, the sweep of his cape, the high collar that now bears the most subtle of silver thread work, the most minimalist concession to his new status as Supreme Leader. The contrast of all that composure and (she grudgingly admits) elegance against the dark hollowness under his eyes is striking.

“Haven’t you been sleeping?”

“Have you?” His mouth twists into something that isn’t quite a smile. Like he knows.

Because of course he knows.

Rey takes a half-step back. “The… defenses, it’s harder when I’m drifting off to sleep. And the day cycles are different from—”

She shuts her mouth, unwilling to even betray her location. She will not give him anything.

But then he looks down at the box she’s holding, and she suddenly knows—feels, the way she can always feel him, quiet at the back of her mind—that he doesn’t have to guess.

His eyes narrow. “How did you get that?”

Rey looks down at the box, feeling the emotion slipping through the grip he keeps so tightly on his own thoughts. “This was yours.”

The moment she relaxes, the moment he allows it, the images flow across their bond like river water meeting the sea. It was part of his calligraphy tools, a box to hold the inks… Rey looks down on the ground and finds one of the narrow bottles, broken now, and sees how he would’ve ground down the pigments on a stone, worked them until they were fine and even, then made them into a paste for later storage, or wetted them to the proper concentration to use straight away. She feels the memory of each movement, her hands becoming his, or his becoming hers, she’s not sure.

There’s a peace to the process, a sort of meditation in him that always had worked to calm him better than any time spent cross-legged on a rock. She can feel the way he holds the pen, dips the brush, the soft movements dancing across the page, leaving their marks.

It all flashes by her in an instant.

Rey sets the box down on the nearby table.

And across from her, Ben narrows his eyes. “I know where you are.”

There is no sense in trying to deny it. Rey takes another step back, not away from him exactly, but just enough for her to look around the remains of the hut. He cannot see where she is, but he can feel her reactions to what she sees, Rey suspects—because she can now feel the same from him.

Space is cold. His quarters on board whichever ship he’s currently in residence are dark and plain and minimalist. But he remembers this place. Rey accepts the memories from him, jumbled all out of order: the loneliness when he’d first arrived, the anger and grief at being sent away and treated as if he was something to fear; the good times, when he’d sat in here and played some kind of game with dice and pegs with another student; lying awake at night, willing the voices in his mind to let him have just a moment’s peace, trying not to cry for his mother when the dreams overtook him; then, the green glow of a lightsaber, waking, terrified and defending himself.

The memory of the roof crashing in around him makes Rey shudder. She looks up, and sees that his gaze is very far away.

“Ben…” His gaze snaps up to hers, focused, hard and brittle.

“We could’ve put an end to all of this,” he starts to say, but Rey can feel his heart isn’t in it. Even he knows, now, that he cannot go her way, just as she cannot go his.

And still, the memory of Luke’s face in the darkness glows green and poisonous in his mind.

“You told him… you would destroy it all, destroy me. Is that what you still want?” Rey says.

The flicker of his eyes betrays him; he looks back behind her, and to the side, where she knows his bed once lay. The bed he slept in, when his fate changed forever. The bed which had been filled with nightmares and loneliness. The bed which is now nothing more than shreds of rotted, worthless cloth.

Rey’s face flushes when he gives her a wordless reply; she knows exactly what it is he still wants. And oh, she wants it too, if she is honest with herself, if she lets down her guard for one desperate minute and lets him in. He’s already been inside of her mind; this is just the natural continuation of that, a feeling that neither of them can now deny, even if they wished to. And between them, the Force surges to life, dancing in almost visible strands of light and energy, waiting, yearning towards union, towards completion.

Towards balance.

 _This isn’t how you fix me, Rey,_ Ben sends her. _This isn’t how it works._

 _I know,_ she sends back.

But he doesn’t deny it… the want he feels, the need her shares. He doesn’t even try to deny it. And he doesn’t move a muscle.

Staring there, at the impasse which has defined the entirety of their interactions, their connection fades away.

Rey takes in a deep breath, the scent of sweet forest and earth filling her body once more. She did it. She got through it—and she can get through their next shared moment, too, and the next, and all of them, if she maintains her focus, and builds her walls high enough.

She will fight this.

She must.


	8. sanctified

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> inspired by a medieval au gifset - Lady Rey, and Knight Ren, steal away for a quiet, forbidden moment

The night before she’s set to leave for the convent, her knight comes to her. Her heart thrums in anticipation and delicate fear when she hears the knock on the wooden door—a fear, like the fear that courses through her body when she wakes in the morning, twisting in the sheets, feeling the echoes of pleasure haunt her body. The same fear that makes her pulse throb between her legs, slow and sweet and needy. The same fear she sees in his eyes, when she opens the door. 

Maybe it isn’t fear at all.

But she doesn’t have any other words for it, because what they have—and she’s under no illusions, now, that this is merely a one-sided thing, not when he’s standing there, watching her, as needy and helpless as she feels—is forbidden. Words have never been given to her to describe this. Only that it’s wrong, and evil, and a sin. Every time he’s touched her he’s been gloved, but Rey still feels as if his leather-clad touch has branded itself upon her flesh. 

An indelible mark, to claim her as his own. 

Her knight stands in the doorway, taking up what feels like the entirety of the frame; his shoulders are so broad, even out of his plate mail. Then Rey snaps back to herself, and reaches out, clasping him by the hand and tugging him inside her room. Shutting the door swiftly, before anyone can see him here. 

He cannot be here. 

And yet he is. 

Rey drops his hand, reluctantly, once she realizes that she’s still clinging to it. Her room is small, practical; as an unwanted ward of the Lord of this manor, she’s only ever been given what she needs to survive. Excess, he had told her, is the way of indulgence. Frivolity, a lure to weaken a woman’s already frail spirit. Women are the doorway to darkness, a vessel of temptation, to lead men astray.

It must all of it be true, then, because he’s here, her knight is here, and every single thought Rey can manage is sinful.

“Why are you here?”

“I needed to see you,” he says, his voice hushed, dark and reverent. “Before you left. I needed you.”

Rey opens her mouth, but any replies she might have managed dry on her tongue. Now you can see me. Or perhaps: You can’t be here. Or even: I don’t want to go away from you. 

She doesn’t answer. Not with her words, anyway. With her eyes, oh, her betraying eyes, she gives him a reply as loud as a scream during mass. She can’t help it, even now, taking in the form of him before her. The dark mass of his hair, waving about his scarred face. The predatory, hungry look in his eyes, a contrast to the fullness of his softly-parted mouth. The leather armor he wears, wax-cured and dinged and mended from all of the battles he’s fought and won, fits to him like a promise of what lies beneath it: Broad shoulders, muscular arms, a solid torso that tapers faintly to lean hips and—

Rey drags her eyes up from where her gaze was heading, blushing fiercely. She’s so obvious. A lusty, wanton creature. Her pulse seems to rush in her ears, and she realizes, belatedly, that she’s wearing nothing but a nightshift. Pale white linen, worn and softened. In the firelight, he probably can see her silhouette right through it. 

Well then. That explains the hunger in his eyes. 

He’s a mirror, standing there, of the desperation, the yearning that she feels, too.

“Ben—” she begins, but he silences her with a kiss. Christ and all the saints, he tastes delicious: spiced wine, tart and sharp, like the first bite of a forbidden fruit that she will climb the tree to devour. He’s as tall as a tree, at any rate, and Rey has to crane her neck up to maintain the contact. Obligingly, her knight wraps an arm around her, and lifts her to his level. 

Things follow swiftly, almost inevitably, after that. Her hands paw at the ties and buckles of his armor, trying to remove it, clumsy and desperate for contact. And neither of them want to break the kiss, which has deepened, all tongue and teeth. His hand goes to cup the back of her hair, and his other hand holds her like she weighs nothing at all. She feels like she’s floating. Up and up, to a heaven she will never see, now that she has given herself over to the pure sin of his mouth. 

They come apart, panting. Rey can feel that her hair has come completely undone from the loose braid she’d plaited, for sleep. Slowly he lowers her to the ground. 

For a moment, she fears that this is it… he’s going to kiss her like this, taste her like she’s the last drop of water in an endless desert, and then he’s going to leave. 

“Ben… make me yours,” she whispers. “Please.”

His eyes widen slightly. And then, with a low noise almost like a growl, deep in the back of his throat, he nods. 

He reaches for his gloves. Peeling them off one, and then the other. Her heartbeat speeds up as he methodically takes off each piece of armor. Vambraces, set in a neat pile on her writing desk. Boots, set beside the fire, like he’s just come home to her after a day away. Then he’s in a black linen shirt, the neckline falling open, and Rey can’t wait any longer; she presses herself against him once more, rising up to kiss at his exposed throat. Bare and pale, with the rasp of stubble against her cheek, she nips at him, tastes him. Salt and sweetness. He growls again, and tilts down to capture her mouth in his in a bruising, desperate kiss. 

“Rey… I can’t make you mine if you don’t—ah—don’t let me—”

Her hands fly to the lacings of his trousers. They trace across a hardness she finds there, beneath the leather, and his hips buck forward. A desperate noise escapes his mouth as he pulls away from her. They cannot do this. 

They are absolutely going to do this. 

Firelight gleams on his skin as he bares himself completely to her. Trousers kicked aside, into a careless pile. Rey can’t stop staring at him, the vault of muscle on his waist, the signs of hard-won battles he bears on her body. She feels little and small beside him, protected, cherished. With shaking hands, Rey begins to draw up the hem of her chemise. The look on his face as she lifts it beyond her thighs is slightly reminiscent of the time she saw him, after a joust, having been knocked in the head. 

The idea that she can do this to him—her body is what is giving him such a response—feels heady and powerful. 

“You know what can come of this, Rey?” He asks, his voice slightly strangled. “A child… there could be a child…”

She smiles faintly. “I’m sure I won’t be the first young woman to arrive at a convent with a babe in her belly.”

His fists clench, and she can see his jaw tighten. Oh, how she wishes they were any two people, other than who they were. That they could be together, as man and wife, with no obligations, no fealty, no damnation of their union. That she was not promised to the church, and he, in sworn service to his master. They both have a debt to pay, and doing this, being together, will only worsen it. 

Worsen everything.

Rey does not care. 

She pulls the chemise all the way off, and casts it aside. Revealing herself to him, fully, as he is to her. Equals—and yet so different. Because he is hard where she is soft. He is broad and strong where she is delicate. Even now she feels braver than he appears, as he stands there, trembling, waiting for her to accept him. He is so gentle with her, Rey’s black-clad knight.

Not so black-clad any more, Rey thinks. 

She reaches for him, and he smiles, and draws her closer. Rey gasps—and he echoes her wonderment—as skin meets skin, fully and completely. He is warm, and tall, and strong. And she is ready. 

There is no going back.


	9. accidental

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boss: Know why I called you here?  
> Me: Because I accidentally sent you a dick pic  
> Boss [stops pouring two glasses of wine] Accidentally?
> 
> #this is awful #but I want to see it #rey ‘I accidentally sent my nudes to my boss omg’ nobody #kylo ‘omg rey is into me act cool act cool’ ren

The phone in his jacket pocket buzzes for the third time in a row. Stuck in the middle of his endless, boring financial meeting, Ben Solo suppresses a growl of frustration. Whatever it was, it was probably on fire, probably going to be his problem to solve, and probably something he wasn’t going to be able to fix in time if Hux didn’t wrap the fuck up and get to the end of his presentation.

Stealthily, he draws the sleek black phone from his pocket, and presses his thumb to the home button to unlock it.

Almost as soon as the message pops up before his eyes, Ben’s got the screen locked again, a blush rising up his throat in pure, automatic response. Hoping, desperately, that nobody else saw.

Who would’ve… that’s… did someone really…

“I’ve got to take a call,” Ben says, standing up right as Hux’s droning speech dissolves into furious sputters, and heading for the door.

“You can’t just—”

Watch me, Ben thinks, all but slamming the door behind him, his long-legged stride carrying him down the hall, past the walls of frosted glass and neutral gray paint that divide up the offices of First Order Financial, and down to the bathrooms. When he’s in there, he closes the door and latches it, double-checking the latch before he draws his phone back out again.

He unlocks it.

And he just… stares.

It’s a text from an unknown number. Two texts, and a photo, to be precise. The first text reads: “Picked this one out for you!” and the second, “Do you like what you see?”

And the photo…

Well.

He very definitely does like what he sees. There’s quite a lot to look at, and his eyes dart around in disbelief. It’s a selfie, taken in somewhat glaring light, of a woman’s body. The camera’s been held up at a higher angle, the way he’s seen some young women take photos of themselves, but that means he can’t see anything but the edge of her chin, and… well, and the rest.

Her bra is pink.

Maybe the color’s called coral, or peach… Ben doesn’t much care, because it’s delicate and edged in an ivory lace that skims the edge of her breasts. They’re pushed ever so slightly up and into a subtle cleavage, and he can feel his hands curving in anticipation of touching them.

And the rest of her body is trim and petite as well, the quiet inward curve of her waist, and the hint of strength in the faint muscularity of her stomach. She’s wearing what looks like black trousers, or a waistband of a skirt, which obscures the rest of her, but he’ll happily take what he can get.

God, she’s fucking gorgeous.

But who is she?

Ben takes a deep breath, and mentally commands his swelling dick to calm the fuck down. He needs to focus—because as much as he appreciates the view, the message has clearly been sent with some level of familiarity. It could be a wrong number, he theorizes—before catching sight of a corner of the floor in the photo. Bathroom floor.

The very same tiles he’s standing on now.

It’s someone in the office. But—oh.

Oh.

All of the mental control he might’ve had over his dick slips away, and he scans the beautiful body once more, a new knowledge in his gaze. Rey. One of the junior analysts… She’d started in his division within the last three weeks, promoted up from somewhere else in the company where her talents had clearly been wasted. It hadn’t escaped his notice, of course, that she was beautiful. But she was intelligent, too. Had a real head for numbers, saw what others missed, and Ben had already been regretting when she’d be promoted away from him, because it was inevitable.

Not away from him, he corrected, still staring at his phone, at her breasts. Away from his department. Surely there’d been chatter about it; First Order Financial was growing, and she’d be a great asset to any division, really.

The fact that her promotion meant he’d no longer be her direct report, and therefore could potentially date, was not lost on him. Apparently, it hadn’t been lost on her, either.

It was Rey, wasn’t it? He was 95% sure. And there was no mistaking her flirty texts—no, she knew what she was doing.

The question was, was he prepared to follow through?

Yes. Yes. Of-fucking-course he was. He closes out of the messaging app and looks at the time on his phone. It’s almost time for people to start heading home for the day, but he knows Rey, and had seen her work late more often than not. Like he does, really.

Had she been staying late, hoping to catch him? Make a move? Waiting for him to make a move?

Ben groans softly, and adjusts his dick in his pants. This is going to be torture. But oh, the reward was going to be so sweet.

He tucks his phone back into the pocket of his jacket, and washes his hands. Time to be strategic.

Ignoring the remainder of the meeting, Ben walks back to his office. He passes by Rey’s desk, and sees that it’s empty—but her purse is still under her desk, so she hasn’t gone yet. Technically, he is still her boss, so he could make he stay late. Given the fact that she was flirting with him like that, during office hours, he suspected she’d probably like it if he ordered her around. He sat down at his desk, a half-smile quirked on his lips.

Opening a new email, he fires it off to her address. Simple, without preamble: I need you to work late tonight. Special project’s come up, and I don’t want anyone else’s hands on it.

Anticipation twists in his gut. A thousand filthy images taunt him, but already he knows none of them can compare to how good it will feel to get his hands on that body. His mouth…

Three minutes later, Rey comes running into his office. The color is high in her cheeks, and she looks at him with an expression that is… not aroused, but wild-eyed, desperate. He opens his mouth to speak, but before he can say a thing, she hastily closes his office door, and spins around to face him.

“Mr. Solo,” she begins, “I am so, so sorry, I never meant—”

“What?” His brow furrows in confusion. “Is this about—”

“—an accident, and completely unprofessional, and I never would’ve dreamed of—”

“Wait, you… you didn’t….”

Rey blinks at him, her face a furious shade of red, her hands folded protectively across her waist. She’s standing there, with her back to the door like she’s facing down a firing squad. Her brown eyes are wide, and red-rimmed.

She’s been crying.

With the efficacy of picturing his grandmother in a nude review, Ben’s dick wilts. She hadn’t meant to send him those texts, or that photo. She hadn’t been thinking of him like that at all.

He feels something too cold and distant to be called a smile form on his face; how wrong he’d been, from the very start. “They’ve already been deleted. Accidents happen.”

Rey sniffs, and gives him a curt nod. The twist of her mouth holds something fragile in it, and, almost imperceptibly, he sees her posture relax.

“So… there’s… no official reprimand, or…?”

Fuck. Why did she have to say that? Now he’s disturbingly grateful for the cover of his desk, because all he can think of is bending her over it, pulling up the hem of that little black skirt, and spanking her ass raw. It’s filthy and inappropriate and crosses every boundary he’s set in a workspace, but fuck if he can’t stop thinking about it.

He swallows thickly.

“No. It’s… no.”

“Oh.” Rey nods, and then tilts her head a fraction, as if she’s seeing him in a new light. “Thank you. I appreciate your discretion.”

“Don’t mention it,” is his hasty reply.

She slips out of his office, and Ben exhales sharply. The door is open just enough for him to hear her greet another one of their co-workers with a cheery hello. Even from behind his door, he can hear the false brittleness in her tone. And slowly, he leans forward, and places his elbows on his desk. Resting his head in his hands.

He’s going to delete the image, of course. He’s going to delete it, and do the right thing, and try to work towards being able to look her in the eye without remembering the color of her bra, the little line of suntan across her breasts, the dip of her navel. He can delete that image from his texts, but it won’t ever be erasable from his mind. Heels of his hands against his tightly closed eyes, and damn it if he still can’t see her. 

And the fact is, he still wants her.

But wanting is not enough.


	10. intentional

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sequel to accidental. 
> 
> Sent nudes to your hot boss on accident? What's a girl to do? 
> 
> Rey's side of the story. (For geekgoddess-trashpanda! and all the anons who asked about it!)

Rey can’t decide whether it was his voice, or his hands, which first captured her attention. 

It was his hands she saw first—sliding a piece of paper across her desk, his fingers slightly splayed, nails blunt, palm wide… Rey had spent entirely too many hours of her life, thinking about those hands. The way he flexes them, moves them… the way he gestures in meetings, or holds his coffee (drip with an extra shot; no sugars) or rubs his fingers against his mouth when he’s thinking.

Or rather, when he’s trying not to say something cutting in the middle of a meeting. 

They are the hands that feature prominently in the fantasies that she will not—will  _ not— _ allow herself acknowledge. (Her hands are smaller; they know where to touch, but they just can’t quite fill her the way she knows—she hopes—his fingers could.) 

The problem with his hands is this: They’re connected to wrists. Thick, mobile wrists, and then thick, lovely forearms, and the day she sees him with the sleeves of his white dress shirt rolled up is the day she knows she has a problem. And that doesn’t even begin to encompass the utterly carnal way his dress shirts stretch across his wonderful, broad shoulders. 

But the voice? The voice is what makes it all oh so much worse. 

After he slides that paper across her desk, on her very first day on the job, Rey hears his voice pour over her, and it’s like warm rain: a little shocking, a little urgent, a little unsettling. It gets under her clothes, kisses her skin, and, like rain, leaves her wet.

Whatever it is he’s said to her, Rey takes two full heartbeats to process it fully. His hands are too big, and his voice is too big, and she just wants all of him to fill her up completely. The reaction is so sudden, so visceral, that Rey feels her new-job jitters fade completely away in the tide of it. She’s never felt anything like this before, this reaction to a stranger. 

She falls into lust with those hands. Feels it redouble at the sound of his voice, and when she looks up into his face that very first day, it’s… not what she expects.

Rey quickly takes in his features—the strong nose, the full mouth, the curious, almost amber eyes—and whatever it was she’d expected the owner of that voice to look like simply fades.

“Hi,” the owner of the hands says, in that baritone that fills her head with the promise of sucking wet kisses over pulse points, the scratch of nails on bare skin. “I’m Ben.”

_ Shit, _ she thinks.  _ I’m totally fucked. _

She isn’t the first person in the history of the world to have a crush on her boss, and she sure as hell won’t be the last, but she can contain this. She’s careful. And she’s not going to become a cliche. Not going to turn into the girl flirts and bats her lashes and risks the chance of ruining what is a really damn good promotion.

And then: The accident.

(The understatement of the fucking century; such an innocuous word for such a monumental fuckup—but it was an accident, and in real life, there are no take-backs.)

The night before it happens—before she accidentally texts two flirty messages and a picture of herself in her underwear to her fucking boss—she’s sitting cross-legged on her futon with her roommate, who is charming and funny and very much devoted to his boyfriend. Finn is determined to make her his project, now that she’s got a real, proper job where she has to dress nicely and interact with other human beings.

“Trust me,” Rey had said, around a forkful of shrimp Pad Thai, “It really doesn’t matter whether my knickers match my bra. Matching sets are expensive, and itchy, and believe me, there’s no one lined up to appreciate the coordination. Hasn’t been for… months.”

It’s been longer than that, but Rey doesn’t want to get into that.

“It’s not about dressing for someone else, it’s about you.” Finn had wrestled the box of spring rolls from out of her other hand, ignoring her muffled grunt of protest at such a robbery. “You know you’re wearing it, and it makes you feel more confident.”

“Wearing sexy knickers to work will make me more confident,” Rey deadpans. “How about, wearing soft, comfortable undergarments, which don’t scratch or pinch, that’s more likely to—“

“I’m calling in my dare, peanut,” Finn had replied. He’d arched a knowing eyebrow at her. “You know I’ve been holding it in reserve for just the right time. Just try it, once. That’s all I ask.”

Rey had gaped at him, shock and amusement on her features. “That’s  _ not  _ in the spirit of a dare at all! Are you seriously going to use it on  _ this _ , just to make a point?”

Finn was her oldest, dearest friend; it took no guesswork at all to interpret his look. She’s not mad at him, not really. Rey had sighed, slumping back against the futon and stabbing her fork into the noodles, turning her eyes to the screen as she accepted her fate. They’d been watching one of Finn’s favorites, a period piece which involved a pig constantly wandering indoors for no apparent reason, and a male lead who was so emotionally constipated, Rey wouldn’t have even wasted her  _ uncoordinated _ underthings on him. When she’d told Finn, ages ago, that she much preferred the miniseries version, that had very nearly been the end of their friendship; Finn had only forgiven her because her ‘accent was so damn cute.’

“I bet Mr. Darcy doesn’t give a shit about coordinated lingerie,” Rey had grumbled, without any real venom behind it. 

“Are you kidding me?” Finn had replied, grinning. “If he saw you in them, he would.” And then, switching to an eerily-perfect posh accent: “I say, Miss Bennet, will you do me the very great honor of festooning Pemberley’s finest chandelier with your delicates?”

At this, Rey had cackled, and swatted him with a pillow.

A dare was a dare, though. Rey held it as a point of pride that she’d never gone back on her word, and she wasn’t about to do so now. 

She’d put on the coral-pink set, and gone into the bathroom on lunch, and sent the cheeky photo and the texts to Finn before she’d even thought about the implications of why there was no message history from him on her phone.

Then she’d scrolled back up, and checked and double-checked the number. 

It wasn’t Finn’s number.

In one terrible moment, any tentative confidence that may have been imbued by her choice of private attire was gone. Washed away in the tide of her own heartbeat, the rush of blood in her ears. She felt suddenly nauseous.  

_ Think, Rey. Think.  _ She’d pressed a hand to her waist, tugging the shirt down further, as if that could retract the photo somehow. Cover up what she’d just done.  _ My face wasn’t in the photo, was it? _

Rey had taken the phone back out and opened the messages, looking at the photo, feeling like she wanted to scream, cry, and vomit at the same time.

No: Her face hadn’t been in the picture. But damn if just about everything else was.

Rey took a deep breath.  _ Think.  _

She could send a quick follow-up text, a funny apology, and then hope that whoever was on the other end never, ever, guessed at who she was. Then she would burn the damn bra, dry her eyes, and pretend like this never happened. Or, alternatively, she could send nothing, flee the country, fake her own death, and hope that whoever was on the other end never ever…

Wait. Who was the other end? Rey frowned, and looked at the contact in her phone. She must’ve put that number in for a reason, but she’d never attached a name or photo to it. It must’ve been someone she’d…

Oh no.

Oh fuck no. 

Rey took a step back, feeling her body collide with the cold metal door to the restroom. She wanted to sink down to the floor, just ball herself up, draw herself tighter and tighter until she disappeared completely. 

Because she knew precisely who that number belonged to. 

She covered her eyes with one shaking hand as the memory played out in vivid clarity in her mind. 

It had been two weeks ago, at an evening function hosted by First Order Financial and intended to celebrate landing their latest major contract. Rey had shimmied into a little black dress with a work-appropriate neckline and a no-nonsense silhouette. She’d put up her hair, pulled on a pair of shiny red patent ballet flats, and tried not to read too much into the look that Mr. Solo had given her when she’d walked in. 

It had turned out that his appraising, faintly distracted look had only been because she’d forgotten to send him a file he’d asked for, right before he was meant to go on vacation. Then he’d given her his number, so she could text him as soon as the file had been sent, just in case the wifi was shit at his hotel…

Three drinks into the evening, and Rey had put the number into her contacts under the name ‘Fine.’ A private little joke, one she had no idea would come back to bite her in the ass.  

_ Fine _ . Not Finn. 

Four little letters; so close, and yet so goddamn far.

She’d just sent a picture of herself in her underwear to her  _ boss _ . And she couldn’t process which of those things were worse: The fact that she now had effectively blown her shot at ever acting on her futile crush on him, or the fact that she’d committed a serious breach of workplace conduct with the person who could—and now, probably would—fire her.

_ Shit, _ she thought.  _ I’m totally fucked. _

Maybe if she could catch him… apologize to him, make it quick and professional and get it over with. Just like ripping off a bandage. Rey recalled that he’d be in his forecast meeting at the moment, and he never checks his phone when he’s in those meetings. Wildly, Rey wondered if she can somehow get to his phone before he does. Delete the messages… But no. He never is so careless as to leave his phone unattended.

This is the only way.

Rey straightened up and smoothed down her shirt, her rumpled skirt. It was time to get out of the bathroom, and face this problem head on.

* * *

 

What she hadn’t anticipated, though, was the look in his eyes, the way his face had… fallen, slightly. Changed, when she’d begged for his forgiveness. There was a look there that had been perilously close to disappointed. 

Which didn’t make sense at all. 

He’d never so much as looked in her direction, save to ask for a report, amend a spreadsheet, give her his data to compile. Rey had spent plenty of time fantasizing about other types of upward trends she could inspire, on her knees and under his desk, or bent over his desk, or befouling the copier on a late night… but he’d never given her a second look. Hadn’t he? 

But Rey was half a pint into her mango-lemon sorbet, and she was distracting herself with her choice of movies, Finn beside her on the futon, snarking all the way. 

“I can’t believe you’re one of those people who thinks  _ Die Hard _ counts as a Christmas movie,” Finn groaned. 

“Of course it is!” Rey said. She deftly shifted the pint away from him, angling it so he couldn’t see how much she’d eaten. He always seemed to have a barometer on her moods as pertained to food. And she still hadn’t told him about today. The photo, and the mistake. 

Or the look on her boss’ face. 

_ Doesn’t seem right to keep thinking of him as Mr. Solo, now that he’s seen your _ —

“So when are you executing Operation Pemberley?” 

“Wha...?” Rey swallowed the bite of sorbet a bit too quickly, wincing at the brain freeze that flared up. 

“You know… confidence-boosting in the workplace via coordinated—”

“Honestly, why does it matter to you?” Rey heard herself snap. All at once, the sounds of gunfire ricocheted through Nakatomi plaza, and she watched with instant regret as the humor disappeared from Finn’s face. “I’m sorry, Finn, I didn’t mean…”

“No, it’s cool, it’s okay,” he said. His voice was a little too calm. His gaze a little too focused on the screen. “I shouldn’t have made it into a thing, shouldn’t have pushed you if you’re really not comfortable—”

“I accidentally sent the pictures to my boss,” Rey blurted out. 

Finn looked back at her. “You did  _ what _ , now?”

“I… I went into the bathroom, and I snapped a pic of the set I was wearing, and I went to send it to you and I sent it to him instead.” The words came out in a rush; on the screen, Hans Gruber was just now discovering the identity of the lone gunman who’d been giving his men the slip. “Finn, he’s the one, the one I’ve been… and I fucked it up, and you should’ve seen his face, he was—”

“Slow down,” Finn said. Reaching forward, he tapped the pause button on the remote, and John McClane hovered on screen, bloody and determined and watchful. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

So she did. 

When she was done, the pint of sorbet was demolished, and Finn was patting her hair as Rey cried into his shirt. 

“How can I even go into work tomorrow and face him?”

“You have nothing to be ashamed about!” Finn countered. “You’re gorgeous, and you’re smart, and you’re a wonderful human being—”

“Who’s just flashed her  _ boss _ ,” Rey continued, dabbing her eyes with her own shirt. “Whatever he thought of me before now, it’s certain what he must think of me now… that I’m the kind of girl who…”

“Makes mistakes,” Finn finished for her. “Surprise: You’re human. I’ve long suspected as much.”

Rey laughed through her waning tears. Finn was smiling at her. “C’mon. You need water and Advil, and then you need to go lay down and get some sleep.”

“We haven’t finished the movie,” Rey protested weakly. 

But she stood up anyway, and let Finn take care of her. 

* * *

The first moment she sees him will be the hardest part, she knows. She can walk into the office, head held high, smile at the receptionist, swipe her badge, and walk to her desk with no problems. Clad in the most sensible of outfits she owns, and and the geometric-print silk shirt she bought with her first bonus, Rey is ready for anything. She’ll walk past his office, give him a casual hello, and they can both act like nothing happened.

He’s not in his office. 

She sits down at her desk, stows her purse in the bottom drawer, and logs into her computer. She pulls up her emails and casually checks to see if he’s sent anything, an out-of-office note, like he usually does. 

Nothing. 

In another life, maybe, Rey might’ve made a move on her boss. She might’ve found some hidden wellspring of courage and talked to him about something other than reports and presentations and meetings. She might’ve met up with him over coffee, asked him about his day, left an opening for him to ask about hers. In another life, she’d be braver and more clever, more enticing. In another life, he would’ve coyly asked her to send him a little picture to tease him during a meeting. He might’ve been the kind of man who liked seeing her thin body, her uninspiring breasts… 

No. Rey sighs, and redirects that old familiar train of thought back to one that isn’t so relentlessly negative. All bodies are beautiful, and so what if that coral bra had been comprised of more padding than breast… damn, if that old, self-conscious hurt didn’t still sting, even after all these years. 

Whatever other life they might have had, it’s gone now. A figment of a figment of imagination. A fragmentary fantasy that never was. Because, realistically, Mr. Solo hasn’t made a move, and isn’t interested in her, in this reality—the only reality that matters. So it doesn’t much matter what might-have, could-have been. What matters is what was. And what is.

Rey works for a while, if the distracted stuff she’s doing can really be called working, and takes a break at 9:45-ish to get a second cup of coffee. She probably doesn’t need it, she’s shaking so much already, but that’s from her trepidation and unease, and not from the caffeine. Probably.

So it’s really not shocking when she turns around, full mug in hand, and collides with a very solid, very stealthy, very tall person who’d been coming in through the doorway.

“Oh shit!” Rey exclaims, adjusting course at the very last minute, redirecting most of the hot coffee to the side right as their bodies make inevitable contact. 

The coffee sprays up and away. It still coats the man’s suit jacket, though, brown seeping through his clean white shirt, and Rey hears the noise of surprise and pain that he makes when the hot liquid hits his skin. 

“I’m so sorry, are you okay?” she’s setting her mug down, reaching for the roll of paper towels on the counter. 

“Rey,” he says. 

She doesn’t have to look to see who it is. She knows. 

And that same wave of fear crests over her, that frisson of urgency and instant regret, when the man grabs her wrist and pulls her into the single bathroom stall. 

He shuts the door behind him, and locks it. And Rey is left staring down at the paper towels in her hand, while a furious, coffee-stained, faintly-growling Ben Solo stands between her and the doorway. 

_ Shit _ .

* * *

 

“I’m getting fired, aren’t I?” she says, her voice trembling as she all but shreds the paper towels in her hands. “This is it; you’re firing me.”

“Rey.”

She won’t look at him. 

“ _ Rey _ .”

“I’m sorry,” she says. Her voice isn’t a pained wail, but a hoarse whisper, and she still won’t meet his eyes. “I’m so sorry. I’ve messed it up. I’ve messed everything up.”

“Rey, stop.” His voice is firm and low; even now, it sends a dart of heated yearning to the apex of her thighs. 

Slowly, Rey looks up at him. Mr. Solo’s eyes are hot like the coffee staining his shirt. His mouth is pressed together, strangely stern despite the mirth in his gaze. For lack of anything better to do, Rey presses the paper towels to his shirt, trying to sop up the stain and succeeding only in spreading it around, making it worse. 

Outside, a pair of voices pass by. A reminder of the very real fact that they’re alone together in the bathroom. The very same bathroom where he knows she took those pictures. The fact is very much not lost on her. She shifts under his gaze. 

“Well?” she ventures, voice tentative and quiet. 

He takes a breath. And his eyes flick down to the wad of paper towels she’s pressing against his chest. Slowly, he raises his hands, reaching for her wrists.

“I’m trying to decide… what I can say right now, what I can do, that isn’t going to be an HR violation.”

His voice is so soft in the quiet cubicle, but Rey is so close to him, she can hear him just fine. Practically feel him, the way it rumbles in his chest and reverberates into her hands, into her body. 

“What do you mean?” 

His gaze captures hers again. “Rey… when you came in to apologize to me for… for the…”

He can’t even bring himself to say it, Rey thinks; she’s clearly so desperate, so pathetic, that he can’t even acknowledge the discomfort she gave him through her mistake. 

“...I felt like I should’ve been the one apologizing to you, instead.”

It takes her a few moments, but then her brain catches up with the words he’s saying, and a frown creases her brow. “What? Why would you have to—”

Another group of voices pass by, heading to the lunch room. Someone tries the door and thankfully, thankfully, it’s locked. But it’s instinct that makes him move, drawing her close to him, covering her mouth with his big, broad hand. Rey realizes just how precarious this is, if someone were to hear two voices in the bathroom, not just one. The things they’d think were going on… the damage it would do, to his career as well as hers… well, more likely, it would only do damage to hers. But Rey’s heart is racing like a rabbit’s, and she immediately stills, going pliant and soft against him, her back against his chest.

And immediately, she feels that faint growl again, except now it’s reverberating from his body right into hers. He bends low, his mouth close to her ear, and the next words are so soft, and only for her. 

“I wanted those photos to be meant for me.”

Rey stills against him. He can’t have just said what she thought he said. It’s… impossible. So strange and surreal that she very briefly considers that the doorway to the bathroom is somehow a portal to an alternate reality. 

He says her name again, cautious, apologetic… and she can feel the tension radiating from his body. He’s frightened, she realizes. He’s terrified, already regretting the words that she’s pulled by some magic from his mouth. Slowly, he lowers his hand from her mouth, backing away from her, the coffee-stained paper towels falling to the floor as he adds distance between them.

And Rey turns. 

His eyes are wary now. His expression closed off. He can barely hold her gaze now, his whole expression a far cry from the confident, collected manager she’s known all this time. 

“Say something, please,” he says, his voice barely louder than a whisper, although whisper is not the right word for it at all. It’s faintly hoarse, like he’s holding tight to all of the emotions cold within him. Emotions she can only guess at, but emotions that…

“I feel it too,” Rey says. “I—”

Someone knocks on the door. Instinctively, Rey steps closer to him, not away, and Ben pulls her close, a protective gesture—or maybe an indulgent one, because she can feel the way his body reacts to being so near to her. 

There is no going back from this. 

There’s no getting out of _this_ , either. 

Because they’re locked in a bathroom together, realization dawning on them that outside, someone is knocking again, insistently. They’re going to be discovered. 

They’re going to be discovered, and she’s going to be fired, and she didn’t even get to do anything properly filthy with him. His hands tighten on her waist, and her body melts into his, and she doesn’t give a single, solitary fuck that the coffee on his shirt has now seeped into hers, ruining the silk… 

He pulls back from her as the knocking outside grows more insistent. His dark eyes search hers.

“Rey,” he says quietly, urgently. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” comes her confident reply. 

His eyes flick over to his own empty coffee cup, sitting on the table by the door that normally holds the extra rolls of toilet paper and hygiene supplies; he must’ve been bringing it in to fill up in the break room, Rey realizes. 

His gaze comes back to her, and there’s something almost like a quirk of a smile on his mouth. 

“Good,” he says. “I have an idea.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	11. quiet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: “We will have to make it quick” and “some one will hear you”

“Shh,” he says, his broad hand buried between her clenching thighs, fingers moving in and out of her in slick, steady rhythm. “Someone will hear you.”

They’re in a supply closet, he guesses—Ben can smell the engine grease and the oil, even if he can’t make out the surroundings on her side of the bond. It doesn’t matter. All of his attention is narrowed on Rey. The way her breath pants hot against his neck, his bare shoulder; the way her sweet cunt feels under his hand; the way her hands curl against his skin, grappling for purchase. 

She needs this. She needs him. 

He’s never been one to deny her. 

He clings to her, holds her up with his left arm even as it keeps his right bent at an awkward, almost uncomfortable angle. Doesn’t matter. He’d bend himself to the point of pain, and beyond, so long as she keeps making those noises. So long as his name keeps tumbling from her lips. She buries her face against his neck, moaning her open-mouthed kisses and chasing them with the press of her teeth; Ben only just manages to stop the answering growl of need that wells up in his throat. Rey is wet for him, so wet; h can feel her desire down to his wrists. 

Inside. He wants to be  _inside_  of her, to bury his cock in her tight heat, but already he can feel the Force starting to pull away from them. He huffs a quiet, needy sound against her hair, fucks into her, three-fingers deep and yet somehow not enough. 

It’s never enough. 

Their stolen moments, away from the conflict that divides them, away from what he’s done and what she’s left undone—this is all they have. 

“We’ll have to make it quick,” he whispers, his voice a low rasp that comes out needy, rather than commanding. “Come for me, Rey. Come for me…”

She never obeys him. Not when he demands, not when he begs, not when he pleads. She is not his to command, not a pet, not an apprentice. An equal…

Instinct takes over, even as the bond begins to grow tenuous and taut. It’s nearly over—in more ways than one. Ben gives over to his need, ruts up against her thigh and feels her answering release. He follows her moments later, heartbeats thudding between their pressed-together chests as she gasps and muffles her noises into his skin. And as he comes down, shuddering, overwhelmed, he hopes that this, too, will leave a scar. Some visible evidence of all the things they do to each other. 

He doesn’t slip his hand out of her; she doesn’t lift her head. Just turns, and lays her cheek against his skin. 

Whatever it is they need to say, neither of them is willing to say. The heel of his hand lays against her sensitive mound, and he rubs it against her, eliciting a ripple of clenching muscles, a reflex. Her fingers tighten on his skin— 

And then, like always, she’s gone. 

And the Supreme Leader of the First Order is left alone, in his own closet, with soiled trousers, slick-wet hands, and a heart that’s overfull, and empty. 


	12. division

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Ben as a child realizing his parents aren’t going to work out... —not GeekGoddess"

“Oh Ben,” his mother had said, her hands warm as she cupped his face. “All couples fight, sometimes.” 

Ben had nodded, as solemn and serious about this as he was about just about everything else. He had leaned his cheek a little into her palm; he was seven years old - seven and a  _half_ ; the half mattered - and every day, it seemed, his world got a little bigger, and a little more perplexing. There were rules for this and rules for that. 

Rules were boring. 

It had been so much simpler back when his parents had been in the same home with him. In the night, when the smoke man whispered in his dreams, Ben knew he could always come into their bedroom, crawl up the middle of the bed and curl his little body against his mother’s back. She slept deeply, and his father would always be the one to wake and console him as he sniffled as silently as possible. There’d be a  _hey, big guy, ‘nother bad dream tonight? ‘s allright, ‘s only a dream…_  murmured in his ear, vibrating as he’d press his face to his father’s chest. 

But it was her comfort he truly wanted. 

He couldn’t explain why. 

Maybe it had something to do with the gentle light that seemed to radiate out of her when she was awake. Mama had said he’d grow to have that same light, too, but when he looked at his own hands, he never saw it. 

He’d learned how to cry quietly. At six, he could hardly make a sound; just last week, he’d learned how to still his breathing, steady his racing heart so that if the smoke man was still watching him, he could trick him into thinking he was asleep. 

At five, he’d learned that his parents didn’t want to hear about those dreams. So, when asked, he’d tell them about dreams of… speeders, and spaceships. Islands - that one wasn’t a lie, at least, and neither was the one about the girl, and the sand, and the fallen-over walker… Those dreams were nice. 

The others… 

He didn’t talk about those dreams. Not anymore. 

“But… why do people fight at all?” Ben asked her. What he really wanted to ask was: Why do you and dad fight? 

His wide dark eyes searched her face as emotions seemed to play across it. If he tried, if he reached out with that strange other-sense, he could almost feel the words she was going to say. Unless she was guarding against him, like she was now. 

His mama smiled at him; it was a sad smile. “Sometimes, they just do, Ben. Sometimes… two people can… love each other, very much. But they need to go do different things. They can’t be together all the time. They need to be… apart. So they can.. do what they have to do.”

“Like when you go to the senate?” Ben asked her. “Like when you go away?”

Something froze on her face. The color, draining from her cheeks. 

Wordlessly, she pulled him in, holding him tightly. Ben took a deep breath, even though his face was a little squished, and it was a little uncomfortable. It was perfect. She smelled like greens and soft things, like the sachets of spicewood she sometimes kept with her folded clothes. She smelled like  _Mama_. 

He felt her wrap him up in her light, too. 

 _When I’m old enough,_ Ben thought, _I’m going to learn how to do that. I’m not going to go away. I’m going to stay with Mama, and she's going to stay, too._


	13. fractured

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "I'm probably going to write one for this too at some point, but Rey is killed, resulting in the bond breaking and leaving Kylo insane. He travels the galaxy, searching for Rey, convinced that she's actually still alive, because his fractured psyche can't handle the thought of her gone"

“Don’t worry, Rey,” he says, smiling as he clenches the little makeshift bag in his hands, clenching down on it until the shattered kyber crystal can pierce through the fabric, through his skin. “I’ll be beside you soon. It’ll all be well; you’ll see.”

The blood is welling up in his palm, but he’s still smiling. The pain is good; he welcomes it, even. It keeps him focused on his purpose. Focused on her. He knows, now, that she’s being coy with him. Guarded, like before. 

He must have made her angry. When he sees her next, he’ll ask her why. And what he must do to make things right once more. She can’t, after all, stay mad at him forever. 

When the bond first went closed between them, he’d tried everything to reawaken it. Plunged his hands in ice-cold water, until the pins and needles had turned into knives. Pressed the still-glowing end of the emitter to the meat of his thigh, screamed into the black leather of his glove, shoved into his mouth to muffle the noise, smelled the stench of burning flesh. Cut himself with a blade, precise and exact, down the scar she had given him. The blood had dripped hot down his cheek, his neck. 

She’d come before to him, when he’d been injured; why was she hesitating now? 

It doesn’t matter.

He’ll ask her when he sees her. This, and a thousand other questions. 

Why did you leave me, Rey?

Why didn’t you wake me, and stay beside me—or take me with you, tucked into a shuttle, flying to the endless reaches of wild space together. 

He can almost picture it now, that other-life: Rey would be beside him, her brown hair down and skimming her shoulders, a little damp from the ‘fresher maybe, and curling. She’d look over from the co-pilot’s seat and smile at him, or roll her eyes, or bare her teeth. He’d feel something, anything, any emotion at all, save for this endless, wretched loneliness. 

His heart is a gaping wound, though. A dead thing, still beating, in his chest. 

With a soft, muffled grunt, he lets the bag with the broken crystal fall into his lap. He wrenches away the neckline of his tattered black shirt, presses his bloodied palm to his chest, willing the ache away. His skin is cold and clammy; hers would be warm, and soft, and perfect. He can almost remember the way it felt, her hand in his. So small and delicate. So precise, compared to the clumsy broadness of his own palms and fingers. So perfect for repairing broken things. 

He smiles, then. All pain forgotten, as the fantasy overtakes him once more. 

She’ll come to him. And if she won’t, then he’ll come to her. He’ll find her. 

Once, he’d ignored the little tugging tendrils of the Force as they drew him to the Light. Then, he’d followed them—tentatively, fearfully at first, then wider, when he had seen her crying in that little stone hut. 

“Don’t cry, Rey,” he says. Heedless of the tears that track down his soot-smeared cheeks. “Don’t—please don’t cry.”

He would never do anything to make her cry. She would be happy again. She would get up from the ground, laugh at the smear of blood—no, dirt, it’s dirt, not blood, how could he have mis-remembered; he lifts his hand, clenches it into a fist, beats at his heart until the anger subsides. 

She would get up. 

She would get up.

She will get up.

She did get up. She’s standing. She’s smiling.

He gets up from where he was crouched beside her, offers her his hand. She isn’t lying there, still and bloodied and broken, on the floor. She’s holding his hand. She’s here. She’s alright. 

Everything is well. 

A dozen years have passed since that moment, maybe more, but his mind, as fractured as the crystal, won’t let him think of them. His cheeks are gaunt when he looks in the broken shard that once served as a mirror in the battered ship’s ‘fresher; his beard grows wispy along his jaw and chin, and his hair is long past his shoulders, uncombed and unkempt. He’ll have to shave, and trim his hair, before he sees her next. She’ll like that. 

“What do you think, Rey,” he asks the streaking stars as they stripe the viewpanel before his tear-filled eyes. “Is this where you’re hiding from me? I’ll find you, don’t worry. I’ll find you.”

He drops out of lightspeed, and surveys the next planet in his search. 

And if the imprints of vibrant starlight leave an impression of her open-eyed face on his mind—if the sound of the engine sounds like her last breath—then his mind simply refuses to acknowledge it. 

Everything is well. 

And he is on his way to find her, at last. 


	14. filled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From the Kink Meme: "She loves how big he is, sometimes she almost cries with relief at how well he fills her."

The first time he fills her, it’s in her mind, in her very thoughts. He pours himself into her, and she into him; although their contact is only a soft, hesitant touch—only fingertip to fingertip, there in the sacred fire-lit shroud—Rey feels all of him, and she surrenders.   
  
Later, when they come together, bodies pressed sweat-slicked and yearning, their blood rises hot in their veins. Every cell of her strains towards him, and she knows, because she feels the truth of it; he, too, is yearning towards her in precisely the same way. And Rey, who’s explored her own body in the privacy of her old life, has a cursory sort of understanding of how two can join together. She smiles beneath him, and feels the waves of uncertainty and hesitation that are rolling off of him like scent from an overripe fruit.   
  
“It’s fine,” she murmurs, pressing her hand across his damp brow, pushing the strands of hair off of it as he groans with need. “Ben, it’s fine, I want this, I want you…”  
  
That isn’t what makes him so nervous, though. But he’s an eager student, a scholar of all things divine and mysterious, and so he diverts his attentions towards something which fascinates him.   
  
His hands tug at the waistband of her trousers, and Rey helpfully lifts her hips, and lets him pull them down. There’s nothing that prepares her for seeing the Supreme Leader eye-level with her—  
  
“Oh Force, Ben—”  
  
He puts that sweet mouth of his to work, then. Tasting her, nibbling and sucking, listing to her when she moans and vocalizes her pleasure, her guidance. He loves taking direction, loves it—she can feel how much he loves it when she threads her fingers through his hair and tugs on his scalp, grinds her body up against his eager mouth. She’s never done this before; he’s never done this before, either, but he’s dreamed of it plenty of times. As much as she feels self-conscious and on display for him, the pleasure and control is far too great to even acknowledge that beyond a passing feeling.   
  
The climax shudders through her before she can even tell it’s there—half of it hers, half his. The connection is thrown wide between them, wide like her legs, vulnerable and open as his eyes as he looks up into hers. She can feel how painfully hard he is even still, almost as if his cock an extension of her own body that she’s just now discovered. There’s a pressing ache, a heaviness, an urgency, and it’s at odds with her own residual waves of pleasure that she wonders how he can bear it.   
  
She can feel how much he needs her. And she is all too eager to provide exactly what it is he needs.   
  
“Please, Ben.” Rey shivers as he pulls slightly away from her. His mouth is wet, and she can feel his memories slip back to the moment when they connected. The rain of Ahch-to wet on his leather glove. She thinks of his hands, his fingers; she connects to the here and now, the way his skin slides up the inside of her thigh. “Please, I’m so empty, I need you inside of me.”  
  
He loves the way her voice sounds: Wrecked already, needy and desperate. Her voice, saying the things he can only fantasize about. But she’s asked, and he’ll be damned if he refuses her now. And Rey takes a slow breath, one long inhale, as he presses just one fingertip against her wet opening. He’s too hesitant; it’s driving her mad, and she’s already peaked once but it’s like she hasn’t come at all, the way he’s teasing her.   
  
Not teasing, his thoughts echo within her mind. Don’t want to hurt you.  
  
Rey moans, rolling her hips to urge him deeper.   
  
He slides his finger in.   
  
Rey sighs. She’s done this before, by herself of course, but the angle is completely different. And his fingers are thicker and longer than her own. He pumps one in and out of her, slowly at first, and then following the rhythm of her body, the pulse of heartbeat he feels between her legs, the way she pants his name like little prayers. Two fingers, then: A stretch she craves, an opening, an intrusion that hits a spot deep and low within her. He’s too lucky, to be allowed to do this for her. She’s so good to him, to let him make her come.   
  
“More, please, more…” Rey whimpers and begs, then lets out a shaky sigh when he adds a third finger to her tight heat. She can feel him press his mouth to the inside of her thigh, rising up, grinding his cock against the floor in an almost painful way.   
  
Rey bears down on his hand, urging him on, until he has four fingers in her, cramped and tight, the angle on his wrist all wrong as he rises up to kiss her belly. He can feel her begging for his cock, feel between the waves of satisfied pleasure the urgency and need that his fingers can’t quite sate. Another time—and, Force, he hopes there’s another time—he’ll lay her back on his bed and finger her until she comes, shuddering, around him. He’ll use his mouth and hands and everything, every part of his being, to bring her pleasure.   
  
She whispers his name, and tugs on his hair, and writhes her slim, toned body beneath him.   
  
“I don’t want—” he finds himself repeating, voice cracking on the last word. “Rey.”  
  
“You can’t hurt me, Ben,” Rey whimpers. “I trust you.”  
  
He stills his arm’s movements, slowly withdraws; He can feel how empty she is without him, when his fingers slide out of her, leaving a trail of her own wetness against her inner thigh. He crawls up her body, rises up over her and she can feel the way his arms are shaking, tremors down his spine, when his eyes lock with hers.   
  
Even if he had done this before, it would’ve never felt like this. Because he has her mapped and imprinted on the inside of his mind now. Feels the satisfying way she tenses when the head of his cock presses against her. Smells the sweetness of her body, the way she relishes the smear of slick against her hip where he’s holding her. And Ben, he’s never thought of his body as anything other than a vessel. But she fucking loves the way he blacks out the light above her. She loves his shoulders, the muscularity of his arms, the solidity of his waist; to her, his body is... beautiful. Massive and powerful. The way her hands dance across the breadth of her shoulders, the way she gently but insistently urges him on—it’s almost too much. And he’s still not even inside of her.   
  
She calls out his name again, and does that circle-roll-thrust of her hips, and the head of his cock slips inside. Even that is bigger than his four fingers, Rey thinks; the surprise and joy of the sensation of him is radiant between their bond. He waits only seconds and presses in deeper.   
  
If he had a voice left, he would tell her how good she feels. The velvet-tight heat of her, the stretch as he slowly fills her. It shouldn’t go to his head this much, the way she reacts to his cock, but oh, it does. He pushes in a little further, and this time, through the haze of lust and need, he sees her wince.   
  
“Rey,” Ben finds his voice, and stills his entire body. Fear and panic washes over him, and he studies her face. “Rey, talk to me.”  
  
He can feel the moment when her guard slips, when the bond narrows between them. Fear and pain—he’s hurt her, he knew he would hurt her, he’s—  
  
“No, Ben, don’t—”   
  
It takes him an agonizing moment to realize that she’s locked her feet behind his back. She’s not telling him to stop, she’s trying to keep him from leaving.   
  
“Just…” she licks her lips, and her lashes flutter down, briefly, as she winces and adjusts. “Go slowly, alright?”   
  
He nods. Even though her eyes are shut, he knows she can feel his agreement. His tenderness, and reluctance to cause her further pain, take precedence over the throb of instinct that perches behind his brain—the urge that makes him want to just fuck her, drive on in, claim what is his due—  
  
No.   
  
So he goes slow. Pushes himself in, her body still slick and open as much as it can be for his cock. He shivers at the way she feels to him—the way he feels to her, through their connection.   
  
There’s a twinge of pain-pleasure as he slowly continues his movement. The feeling that there’s more of him, and still more, and how is he fitting, how can he possibly—  
  
Rey feels trapped beneath him in the most delicious way. It’s a kind of surrender, a kind of submission to him that isn’t a submission at all… because she can feel his tenderness, even as his cock feels as if it’s going to split her in two. He’s proportional everywhere, a huge man, compared to her. Even his fingers were barely enough to ready her to take him. But she’s never backed down from a challenge, and she’s not about to start now.   
  
At last, with a shuddering exhale, he’s pressed into her entirely. Rey takes a breath, breathing him in completely, and she’s shocked to feel wetness trailing down the sides of her cheeks. She opens her eyes, and sees the worry in his gaze as he waits for her.   
  
“You feel so good,” she gasps. “So good, Ben, so good, so fucking perfect—”  
  
The relief floods their bond, and he gives her a tentative smile. His arms strain and shake with the effort of holding himself back. She nods a little, and he begins to move.   
  
Slowly. He is so slow. Almost too slow, but he’s devoted to giving her precisely what she needs. It’s not about his needs—or rather, this is what he needs. To submit to her completely, to give himself to her, to fill her up with all of himself. He rocks in and out, and each time, the roll of her hips rises to match his like the slow, rising rave. Before he even knows it, he’s fucking her in earnest, her hands on his side, touching him on bare skin and scar tissue.   
  
She’s everything. Everything. No one can compare. There is no one other than her, and never will be. His name in her mouth and his cock in her body, and his mind touching her mind—it’s perfection. Pure and simple.   
  
He bends down and kisses away the tears on her cheeks. He’s too far gone to make it to her mouth, and he doesn’t want to stop the steady chant of his own name. He wants to hear her say it again and again. Wants to be the one she calls out for, the one whose mouth holds that sound forever. He wants, more than anything, to be able to last beyond a few more frantic thrusts before he spills into her.   
  
Holding her gaze, he lets himself surrender to her completely.   
  
“Take it, take all of it—” he gasps. It could be his cock, or his heart, either or both; all. It’s hers. It’s hers. All of him is hers.   
  
“Oh—!” Rey stills around him, her legs locking, halting his movements as the pleasure seizes her. And it takes nothing at all for him to let go of his control, and follow her through the waves.   
  
A desert creature, he thinks distantly, as her moans echo in his ear, as her hand tangles in his hair, and buries his face against her neck. A desert creature, and yet she’s warm and soft and wet, so wet—  
  
Yes. This. This is more than he ever could have imagined. The tight feel of her holding him inside, as she comes down from her shuddering heights. He opens completely to her, and relishes the way he feels so massive within her. And the tantalizing thought that, one day, she’d want to do the same for him. To fill him up in her own way, to make him tremble and shake. To imprint upon his body the way he’s marked her own.   
  
Ben closes his eyes, and mouths against the skin of her collarbone. Moves a lazy scrape of his teeth across it, tasting her sweat. He’s still hard inside of her, but she’s far from complaining.   
  
With a fluttering squeeze of her body, she wrenches another loud, inelegant noise from his mouth, and she laughs—Force, she laughs—she’s happy, she’s okay, he hasn’t hurt her—  
  
“Of course you haven’t hurt me…”   
  
“Rey…” he mouths her name into her skin, and for the first time in a very, very long time, he smiles. 


	15. quiet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "She hated having to be quiet. He on the other hand loved putting her in situations where she absolutely had to be, and seeing how long she could last."

His big hand is broad enough to cover her mouth entirely as his cock slowly fucks into her from behind. Rey is hunched over… something… her senses blurring together with his as the thrum of their bond intensifies. One moment it’s a console, dusty and thirty years out of date; the next, it’s whatever he sees when he looks down at her like this. Some kind of sleek, black desk, on a starship far away.

Rey writhes against him as his slow, steady pace torments her. She wants to bite his hand, to scream, to come -

“Shh,” he says softly, inside her mind, inside her very skin, he’s so deep inside of her that she will never bleed him out. “Shh.”

Rey wants to scream.

Kylo just laughs. Dark, and soft, and low. A voice only she can hear.

Maybe she is going mad.

This is what they do, now, apparently. Because the bond, whatever it is, whoever began it, never went away. Her resigned closure of the Falcon’s door wasn’t the end, and oh, she’d been such a fool to think that it even could be. To think that she has any control over this.

To think that he does, either.

But the truth is, they’re caught up in something that’s even bigger than their separate selves.

He’s everywhere, now. Within her, inside her every cell, intertwined around her like a vine on a branch; and she, in turn, is within him, she knows. He cannot deny her this, not when she reveals her filthiest, most shameful thoughts to him. Not when she tries to struggle, half-heartedly, out of his needy grasp. Not when they tumbled down together, perched betwen two star systems, fumbling and needy and aching to fill and be filled, to give and to take pleasure, to give and to take control.

Against his hand, Rey whimpers. It’s not begging, not if he can’t make out the words. It doesn’t count then. Doesn’t it? 

“Shh,” he says again. “You wouldn’t want the remains of your precious resistance coming in and finding you like this, would you? Bent over for me, fucking yourself on my cock like this…”

Rey tries to thrust back against him, urging him to speed up, to give her what she craves. Now that he’s planted that image, the thought of all her friends coming in here, the thought of being discovered… exposed, like this, debasing herself for their most hated foe, is as horrifying as it is arousing. He does not give her what she demands, though; His pace is still as even and measured as ever. Tears prick at her eyes, and Rey works a desperate hand down between her legs, her hips wedged awkwardly against the unyielding console. She needs to come. 

Wordlessly, Kylo tugs at the threads of the Force, and pulls her wrists back up. Pins them down to the console with a none-too-gentle push.

“I think you want them to find you, to hear you,” he says, feeling her hot breath against his hand, feeling her body clench and flutter around him as her climax approaches. “I think you want to be found like this. Maybe I’ll just - ”

At that, he stills completely.

Rey screams out against his skin. Her hips work back against him, trying to get him to continue. He can’t stop now, can’t deny her what she needs. She wants him, wants to come, more than she’s ever craved water or food or air to breathe.

At this, his hand clamps down tighter, muffling her cries.

“Shh,” he says again. “Are you going to be good for me, Rey? Good, and quiet?”

She nods.

She can be good for him. She can obey.

His hips begin to move again. They can play this game all day, he thinks. And, with a rush of pleasure and pure, dangerous joy, Rey echoes his thoughts in perfect unison.


End file.
